masters thesis - developing desirable technology with user innovators. case nokia 770 internet...
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HELSINKI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS (HSE)Department of Marketing and Management
DEVELOPING DESIRABLE TECHNOLOGY WITH USER INNOVATORS: THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET
MarketingMaster’s ThesisJussi H. Mäkinen k72221Fall 2006
Approved by the head of the department of Marketing and Management
_____/_____ 2006, and awarded the grade _____________________
______________________________________________________
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HELSINKI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS ABSTRACTMarketing master’s thesis October 31st, 2006Jussi H. Mäkinen
DEVELOPING DESIRABLE TECHNOLOGY WITH USER INNOVATORS –THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET
Research objectives
The research objectives of this study was to understand the role of users and user made innovations in the product development process of a new consumer high-technology product, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The theoretical part of the study focused on user’s role in the innovation process and in technological development concentrating especially on a user innovator group calling themselves as “hackers”. The empirical part focused on describing how these user innovators following the hacker culture reinvented the functionalities of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
Research methodology
Research methodology in this thesis was adapted from the model of social construction of technology. This model emphasizes cultural and social factors in the product development process thus viewing the users as the agents for technological change. The author of this study worked at the Nokia Multimedia organization while doing this thesis and during that time 15 people were interviewed in order to create a social construction of Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The people interviewed for this thesis were separated into three social groups: Nokia managers involved in the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet as the first group, hackers who had developed new functionalities for the product as the second group and a the non-users as the third group.
Research results
As a result of this study I propose a new concept, hacker-hobbyism, to define how innovations and insights from a group of users, hackers, affected the functionalities and usage possibilities for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet after it was brought to the markets. Hacker-hobbyism is a user innovation activity that follows hacker culture and which is not restricted by legal or proprietary issues that sets guidelines for manufacturers’ development activities. The consequence of hacker-hobbyism is that hackers can develop and implement functionalities to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which would be impossible to do for Nokia’s official product development. In this way hackers could reinvent the product to function beyond its original use possibilities. Hacker-hobbyism can then be used to gain insights and innovations for Nokia’s internal product development.
Key words
Hacker-hobbyism, user innovation, consumer technology, product development
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HELSINGIN KAUPPAKORKEAKOULU TIIVISTELMÄMarkkinoinnin Pro Gradu –tutkielma 31.10.2006
DEVELOPING DESIRABLE TECHNOLOGY WITH USER INNOVATORS –THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET
Tutkimukseni tavoitteena on ollut kuvata kuluttajamarkkinoille suunnatun uuden teknologiatuotteen kehitysprosessia ja käyttäjien sekä käyttäjälähtöisten innovaatioiden merkitystä ja roolia tässä prosessissa. Tutkimusongelmaani olen lähestynyt Nokian 770 Internet Tabletin kehityshistorian kautta. Vuonna 2005markkinoille tullut Nokia 770 Internet Tablet on Nokian ensimmäinen avoimeen lähdekoodiin perustuva tuote, jonka kehitystyön oleellisena osatekijänä on käyttäjien osallistuminen tuotteen sovelluskehitykseen. Erityisen mielenkiinnon kohteeksitutkimuksessani nousivat ns. ”hakkerit”, jotka edustavat historiallisesti merkittävää, mutta usein innovaatio- ja teknologiatutkimuksessa pienelle huomiolle jäänyttä teknologiaan liittyvää käyttäjäinnovaatio-alakulttuuria.
Tutkimusmenetelmänä olen käyttänyt teknologian sosiaalisen konstruktion mallia joka korostaa kulttuurisia ja sosiaalisia tekijöitä tuotteen kehitysprosessissa sekä käyttäjiä teknologisen kehityksen muutosagentteina. Empiirisen tapaustutkimuksen olen tehnyt Nokia yhtymän multimediayksikön tuotekehitysyksikössä Helsingin Ruoholahdessa 1.5 - 31.09.2006 välisenä aikana, jolloin osallistuin tuotteen kehittämiseen sekä haastattelin tuotekehityksessä ja markkinoinnissa mukana olleita henkilöitä Nokian sisältä sekä käyttäjiä, jotka olivat kehittäneet omiin tarpeisiinsa innovaatioita niin Nokian 770 laitteelle kuin muillekin kaupallisesti menestyneillemobiileille teknologiatuotteille.
Tutkimukseni tuloksena on uusi käsite, hakkeri-hobbismi. Hakkeri-hobbismi syntyy, kun teknologiatuote koetaan haluttavaksi kohteeksi käyttäjäinnovaattoreidenhakkerikulttuuria seuraavalle kehitystyölle ja sen seurauksena syntyy innovaatioita, jotka eivät aina lähtökohtaisesti palvele kaupallisten toimijoiden liiketoimintamallejamutta jotka silti voivat lisätä teknologiatuotteen toiminnallisuuksia ja haluttavuutta syntyessään ja levitessään hakkeriyhteisöissä ja niiden ulkopuolella. Hakkeri-hobbismin kautta on mahdollisuus myös saada uusia näkökulmia tai jopa konkreettisia innovaatioita yrityksen sisäiseen tuotekehitystyöhön. Avoimen lähdekoodin käyttäminen teknologiatuotteessa kuten Nokian 770 Internet Tabletissa edistää hakkeri-hobbismia, mutta ei kuitenkaan ole välttämättä edellytyksenä ilmiölle.
Hakkeri-hobbismi -käsitteen kautta olen halunnut tuoda esiin myös käyttäjälähtöistä luovan tuhon prosessia, joka osaltaan erottaa käsitteen muista käyttäjälähtöisistä innovaatiokäsitteistä. Vaikka hakkeri-hobbismista sekä käyttäjälähtöisestä luovan tuhon prosessista löytyy esimerkkejä muidenkin teknologiatuotteiden kuin Nokian 770 Internet Tabletin osalta, pitäisi hakkeri-hobbismi ilmiötä tutkia kuitenkin enemmän ennen kuin tutkimuksessani esittämäni tulokset olisivat laajemmin yleistettävissä.
Avainsanat:Hakkeri-hobbismi, käyttäjäinnovaatiot, teknologia, tuotekehitys
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION...................................................................................51.1 ”If it’s not hackable, it’s useless…” ................................................................ 51.2 Goals of the study.......................................................................................... 71.3 Research design ............................................................................................ 81.4 Terminology ................................................................................................ 10
2. REPRESENTATION OF THE HACKER................................................112.1 Hackers and the history of computer technology ....................................... 112.2 Hacker culture .............................................................................................142.3 Categorizing hackers ...................................................................................16
3 SOCIAL SHAPING OF INNOVATION .................................................. 193.1 User’s roles in the innovation process.........................................................19
3.1.1 The imagined user.............................................................................203.1.2 The emerging user ............................................................................ 213.1.3 The creative user...............................................................................22
3.2 Social construction of technology ............................................................. 253.2.1 Relevant social groups......................................................................263.2.2 Interpretative flexibility ...................................................................283.2.3 Closure and stabilization .................................................................293.2.4 Technological Frame........................................................................29
4 THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK........................................30
5 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH PLAN ...........................................................335.1 Research methods ....................................................................................... 335.2 Conducting the research............................................................................. 35
6 THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET ................................................................................................406.1 Nokia and the challenges of open source Internet Tablet..........................40
6.1.1 The software challenge .....................................................................426.1.2 The operator challenge.....................................................................456.1.3 The market challenge .......................................................................46
6.2 The birth of the product ............................................................................. 486.3 Non-users’ problems towards the product ................................................ 526.4 Hacking the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet ..................................................... 556.5 Developing the concept of hacker-hobbyism............................................. 64
7 CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................687.1 Limitations and further research suggestions............................................ 707.2 Managerial implications ............................................................................. 72
References............................................................................................. 75
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1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 ”If it’s not hackable, it’s useless…”
Diffusion and domestication of personal computers and digital tools has
democratized creativity. Users of products and services - both firms and individual
consumers - are increasingly able to innovate for themselves (von Hippel 2005).
Enthusiast hobbyists are constantly customizing, exploring and altering
technological products. The internet is now full of communities of user innovators
sharing the methods and the results of their creativity freely with everyone.
Studies (von Hippel 1986, 1998, 2005, Jeppesen 2005, Jeppesen & Molin 2005,
Jeppesen & Fredrikson 2005) show that companies are taking a growing interest in
harnessing and engaging creative consumers in order to produce commercially
attractive innovations. In many cases companies have substantially profited from
the inventions and solutions created by hobbyists. According to the same academic
literature, it might seem that this form of innovation is the dream of every
manufacturing organization in the fast changing world of high technology and short
product life cycles - an innovative and outsourced R&D organization of hundreds or
even thousands of volunteers improving products and constantly creating new
innovations.
The problem is that not all user innovators want to maintain or facilitate the business
models that companies have devised to profit from. Revenue models and intellectual
property rights are usually ignored when a particular user innovator group, hackers,
began to re-invent products to function beyond their original specifications. Popular
consumer technologies, or more specifically, technologies that have become popular
have been desirable targets for hackers in the early stages of their lifecycle. Apple’s
iPod was a popular hacking platform when it was first introduced to the market, and
it was hackers who first implemented disruptive functionalities, such as Microsoft
Windows compatibility, when the product officially supported only Apple’s own
operating system (Kahney 2005, 73). Sony’s Playstation Portable (PSP) gaming
device was hacked to function as a web-browser and an emulator for old console
games long before Sony officially released the updates to enable web surfing and
game emulation on the device. These disruptive ”homebrew” functionalities that
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were first implemented by hackers have since become standard features on their
respective technologies and are now part of the revenue model for the iPod and the
PSP. Whether by accident or intention, the official product development of these
highly successful products followed the path that was first taken by hackers who
refused to accept the limited functionality given by the manufacturer.
Moreover, ’’hackability’’ or the ability to reinvent products has become a major
dimension of the desirability of technology. Examples of this can be seen as
technology enthusiasts speculate on upcoming products on the internet. As one
anonymous user stated in a online discussion forum analyzing his interest towards
an upcoming product ”…if it’s not hackable, it’s useless.” Companies have now
started to listen to the voices of the underground: the director of design strategy at
Nokia, Marko Ahtisaari, turns this phenomenon into a design challenge in his public
weblog by asking “How do we design for everyday hackability?” (Blogging over Las
Vegas 2005)
Manufacturers of technology have chosen very different strategies towards the user
driven hacking phenomenon. For instance, after one hacker developed and
distributed free software that allowed the robot dog Aibo to perform break-dance
moves, manufacturer Sony Corporation responded with the threat of legal action
(Mollick 2005). On the other hand, the use of open source software has recently
created a new wave of user innovation activity. Mobile communications house Nokia
has recently launched their first open source based product, the 770 Internet Tablet,
which means that anyone who is willing and able to develop further product
functionalities can do so thanks to its open software architecture. Since the product
is now shaped by a collaboration of users and the manufacturer, the interaction
between these user innovators and the manufacturer continuously shapes the
product creating new challenges and possibilities for Nokia, while at the same time
this opens up an interesting research subject in the field that combines new product
development with technology and innovation studies.
With all the actions manufacturers are now taking to facilitate, stop, or adapt the
work of hackers, the culture of consumption as well as the methods of development
of consumer technology is changing. The dialogue between hackers and
manufacturers is shaping technology and the way that desirable new consumer
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products are being developed and consumed. My thesis is a study of this
contemporary sociotechnical change.
1.2 Objectives of the study
This thesis is about new product development. Within the field of new product
development, the main interest lies in users and user driven innovations.
The main objective of this thesis is:
To examine the role of particular user innovators – hackers - in the
development process of a new consumer product, the Nokia 770
Internet Tablet
The sub-goals of the main research problem are:
To understand hackers and hacking as a consumer subculture
To examine how hackers’ knowledge, insights, and innovations shape
a product after its market launch; and
To understand how a technological artefact evolves in alternation,
variation, and selection between different social groups
In the theoretical part of this thesis, I will attempt to make sense of the role of user
innovators and the specific representation of hackers, in the development of new
products. Upon completion of the theoretical section of this paper, I will construct a
theoretical frame to be used in the empirical part.
It was a commonly held view among the product developers and managers who were
working for Nokia that open source software will possibly be used in all the products
that Nokia makes in the future. The open source software movement has close
linkages to hacker culture so the aim of this study is to bring in the cultural
perspective of product development. This is done by studying the connections
between economics and culture and how these connections and meanings are tied to
technology and its social construction as in a form of a material artefact brought to
the marketplace.
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As a result of my study, a new concept “hacker-hobbyism” is proposed to describe
how knowledge, insights and innovations from users following hacker culture
affected the functionalities of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and how due to its
“hackability” the product was seen as desirable and “working”. I will also attempt to
generalize my findings beyond the particular artefact studied in this thesis and
propose how hacker-hobbyism can create a “user driven creative destruction”. This
activity can then be used as a resource to give new insights and innovations for
product development and possibly even create new revenue models for companies
that are resourceful enough to pay attention to hackers and their underground
innovation activity.
1.3 Structure of the study
This thesis begins at the same point as successful product development; product
developers draft the products of the future for imaginary consumers and as a result
their way of representing the end-user is the key to their success (Kotro & Pantzar
2002). The second chapter starts to construct a representation of a hacker, the main
actor followed in this study. This representation is formulated through the story of
the birth of personal computers and by reviewing the culture and work ethics that
hackers follow. At the end of the chapter hackers are categorized further by their
ability to innovate in two different dimensions of technology; applications and
platforms.
The third chapter places the user in an active role in the innovation process and
further places this interaction into a larger sociotechnical framework. The users who
are at the leading edge of change are the source of the majority of all commercial
innovations, especially in the field of high-technology (Hippel 1986, 2005). The way
that this “hobbyist knowledge” from the users enters the product development stage
and finally into a new product is a complex social and cultural learning process
(Kotro 2005). The process of innovation does not however end when the new
product is launched and brought to the marketplace (Akrich 1995). It’s often the
innovative consumers who determine and define the uses for the technology,
assuring that successful diffusion and domestication are made possible (Pantzar
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1996). This approach to explaining the success of artifacts, as in new products or
technologies, follows the theory of sociotechnical change of technology:
(…) for the theory of technology, “working” of a machine should be the
explanandum, not the explanans. The “working” of a machine is not an
intrinsic property of the artifact, explaining its success; rather it should
figure as a result of the machine’s success. (Bijker 1995, 14)
In the fourth chapter the theoretical framework of this thesis is presented using the
framework adapted from the theory of social construction of technology developed
by Pinch and Bijker (1984).
The fifth chapter presents the empirical research plan used in this thesis. The author
worked as a graduate trainee in open source product management inside Nokia
Multimedia organization between 17.5.2006 – 28.09.2006, while at the same time
preparing a rich case study of the research subject, the 770 Internet Tablet. Before
joining the product development team for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, three
interviews were made with the director of open source platform, a senior R&D
manager and product program manager, all of whom were part of the team
developing the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. While working at Nokia on the product
management team more interviews were made with managers inside Nokia and
users outside Nokia. Also, on-line communities, weblogs and discussion boards
where users and non-users “spoke up” about the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet were
followed during the period of time when this thesis was developed.
The sixth chapter begins the empirical part of this thesis, which is a case study of the
development process of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The distinctive feature of this
product is that after its market launch, its development is continued through
collaboration between users and the manufacturer, which will be the first time that
Nokia has used this kind of “open source” development model on any of its released
products. At the end of the sixth chapter, I will present a model of the social
construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet based on the findings from the
interviews and observations made while working for Nokia.
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Finally, the seventh chapter brings together the theory and the empirical part of this
thesis to form a conclusion on how technological, cultural and social dimensions met
in this thesis. In the seventh chapter also limitations and further research
suggestions and presented along with the managerial implications.
1.4 Terminology
This section reviews the central terminology used in this thesis.
Domestication of technology: How an artifact takes different shapes during its
lifecycle (Pantzar 1996, 53).
Innovation: In general, an idea, process or tool which has some level of newness to
one who adapts it (Rogers 1983). Innovation can also be divided to technological-,
economical- and organizational innovation as Schumpeter (1934). Innovation can
be also characterized by its impact on existing markets or businesses. Disruptive
innovation significantly changes a market or a product category while sustaining
innovation allows organization to continue to approach the markets in a same way
(Christensen 1997)
Re-invention: Degree to which an innovation is changed or modified by a user in the
process of its adoption or implementation. (Rogers and Rice 1980, 500-501)
Hacker: 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and
how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only
the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or
who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A
person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming
quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using
it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people
who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. 7. One who enjoys
the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. A
malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around.
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Hence “password hacker”, “network hacker”, the correct term for this sense is
cracker. (The Jargon File 2003)
Homebrew: Software that is done without official approvement of the system that it
has been made for. (Homebrew
Open source software: Software that is made freely available to all and can be
further developed by anyone. Well know examples of open source software is the
GNU (Gnu Not Unix)/Linux operating system (Hippel and Krogh, 2003, 209)
2. REPRESENTATION OF THE HACKER
The creation of successful artifacts depends on the ability of innovators to generate
user representations and integrate them into their designs (Akrich 1995, 169). The
aim of this chapter is to introduce and understand better the innovative users
followed in this study, known as hackers, and demonstrate how their innovations
and insights are represented in personal technology. In order to demonstrate this,
the history and culture of hackers and personal computers are examined and finally a
model to categorize hacker’s innovativeness with technology is presented.
2.1 Hackers and the history of computer technology
Hacker is a term for a person that is usually associated with computer criminality in
the popular media. However, in the counter-culture context, the term hacker refers
to a pioneer or to an underground hero that explores alternative uses for technology.
(Levy 1984)
The creation of the modern microcomputer can be seen either as a routine process of
linear technological innovation or as a product of social vision of democratic
technology. Linear history suggests that the invention of the microprocessor at the
Intel Corporation in 1971 was the key invention for the development of
microcomputer technology but the other one is based on a socially determined
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representation of innovators – the hackers – led by their ideology (Bardini et all 1995,
41).
The term “computer hacker” along with the idea of personal computers that could be
used and configured by users originated in the 1960’s in the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. A group of young researchers who were interested in computer
technology and wanted direct access to operate computers, that at that time
consisted of room sized computer mainframes that were operated by special group of
people called operators. The actual users or programmers were not even allowed to
touch the computers. (Himanen 2001, 159)
This resistance to the mainframe approach and group of computer “operators” was
the start of the personal use of computers. In the late 1970’s the corporations that
manufactured mainframe computers saw the personal use of computers merely as a
meaningless detour in computer technology. Ken Olsen, the chairman of the Digital
Equipment corporation said in 1977 “No one wants a computer at their house”
(Gatlin 1999, 39). The personal computer appeared as a revolutionary rupture in
computer technology history, made possible by the new actor, the hacker, who used
technology as a means to personal expression and social autonomy (Bardini et all
1995).
The first commercial personal computer that was usable to non-engineers, the Apple
1, was built in 1976 by Steven Wozniack, a 25 year old computer hobbyist and a self-
reclaimed hacker and member of the ”homebrew computer club” in San Fransisco.
Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a
fully-assembled circuit board. Followed by the success of Apple 1, the Apple 2 was a
complete personal computer set, the first computer that was ready to be used out-of-
the-box (Himanen 2001, 160). After the success of the Apple 2 in 1977 other personal
computers began to appear on the market. The US based electronics chain Radio
Shack introduced the TRS-80 model in 1977. Lindsay (2003, 35) stated that the
envisioned users of the TRS-80 were also members of the early hacking culture –
people who had not only an interest in technology, but also skills and knowledge to
construct their own machines.
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Unlike today, in the early days of computers, an operating system and other
commercial “packaged” software applications were a rarity. Much of the software
development in the 1960’s and 1970’s was carried out in academic and corporate
laboratories by scientists and engineers. These individuals found it a normal part of
their research culture to freely give and exchange software they had written, to
modify and build upon each other’s software both individually and collaboratively,
and to freely give out their modifications in turn. (Hippel and Krogh, 2003, 209)
As researchers that were coding software started to also work for commercial
purposes the culture of freely revealing the source codes of computer programs
started to quickly vanish. Opposing this development, a young researcher named
Richard Stallman developed the free software licenses and the GNU operating
system which later on gave birth to the open source software movement and Linux
operating system. (Williams 2002)
The best know open source software project today, the Linux operating system, was
originally created by a university student and a coder hobbyist, Linus Torvalds.
Torvalds uploaded the first early and incomplete version of his Unix based operating
system Linux to an electronic bulletin board in 1991 and asked for help from other
hobbyists to improve it’s functionalities. Since then Linux has grown into a huge
worldwide success and to a flagship of hacker culture, opposing commercial software
and promoting hackers innovative culture. (Hippel and Krogh, 2003)
Raymond (1999) emphasizes that the most important feature of the success of Linux
was not technical but sociological. Until the development of Linux, everyone believed
that any software as complex as an operating system had to be developed in a
carefully coordinated way by a relatively small, tightly-knit group of people. After the
success of Linux these attitudes changed, creating a new boom of open source
software development projects all over the internet to oppose proprietary software
and to promote the culture of hackers. Today, "the hacker community" and "open-
source developers" are two descriptions for what is essentially the same culture and
population (Raymond 2001). The majority of open source developers state that the
hacker community is a primary source of their identity and this aspect of their
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community is big part of their motivation in participating in open source projects
(Lakhani 2005, 12).
2.2 Hacker Culture
While the history of computer technology provides a good foundation from which to
understand hackers, they cannot be understood solely in terms of technology which
they are intervened (Thomas 2002). In this section of this thesis the culture of the
hackers is studied further.
The whole culture of hackers is based on a special “hacker ethic” which is a set of
concepts, beliefs, and morals that came out of a symbiotic relationship between the
hackers and their machines. According to Levy (1984) the principles of the “hacker
ethic” are:
Access to computers should be unlimited and total. All information should be free. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged only by their hacking skills You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better.
Thomas (2002) argues in his study of hacker culture that hackers and hacking are
also much more about a set of social and cultural relations, and also the ways in
which the image of the hacker has been crafted, redefined and used as a symbol in
popular culture to understand technology and give a face or image to the fears and
hopes, uncertainties and beliefs that accompany technological change.
Linus Torvalds, the programmer of the original Linux operating system and a
respected hacker himself defined the culture of hacking further when saying that a
hacker is not someone who uses computers and computer related skills only to
survive or to earn money, instead computer hackers are driven by two higher motives,
social and entertaining (Himanen 2002, 15).
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First, a hacker uses a computer as a social tool where communication through
discussion groups and chat rooms create communities where ideas, solutions and
best practices circle from one peer to another. The social status and order of a hacker
in the community is determined by his/her ability to create code and new programs
that work well to serve its purpose (Mayer 1989). Highly skilled and innovative
programmer hackers are sometimes referred as “Elite”. Some hackers have created
toolkits, scripts or patches for others to easily perform hacks and modifications to
readymade software like computer games (Schleiner 2002). In hacking slang, the
users who don’t have the ability to create novel computer code but use ready made
tools or action scripts to perform “hacks” are known as “script-kiddies” (Mollick
2005).
Secondly, technology itself, as in the form of a computer, represents entertainment
for hackers. Existing games and other forms of digital entertainment are merely
extensions of that fun. In the very heart of hacking is one’s ability to create
something new and unique and to share it with others. (Himanen 2002, 15)
Reflecting this view on hacking, entertainment and technology, it does not come as a
surprise that Spacewar, the first computer game ever was originally a “hack” as in a
clever program developed by a hacker, Steve “Slug” Russell at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 1961 (Haddon 2002, 58).
The first “hacks” were in fact simple computer games made by students to entertain
themselves and their peers. One important fact of this entertainment was also the
chance to show off with one’s coding skills. In the hacking spirit, early computers
were treated as entertaining toys, rather than scientific tools (Haddon 2002, 58).
Thomas (2002) argues in his study of hacker culture that by the late 1980s, hacking
had undergone a critical cultural transformation. As computers and information
technology became increasingly ubiquitous, centralized, and seemingly beyond
society’s ability to understand or control, the hacker assumed symbolic significance:
mysterious, dangerous, the embodiment of contemporary anxieties about technology.
In this new vision, hackers were no longer seen as guardians or innovators but as
criminals. This notion of cultural transformation serves as a good introduction to the
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next chapter where hackers are categorized further on their ability to innovate and
their motives to do so.
2.3 Categorizing hackers
Hackers can be categorized in many different ways, including motivation, the
communities they work in, and what is most relevant to this thesis, by their ability to
innovate. This section reviews the way hackers have been categorized and then a
matrix is formulated in order to better understand their innovativeness.
According to the Jargon File (2003) , which is a file used to store the language and
culture of hackers, the often loaded term "hacking" refers to Grey Hat hacking, which
is generally understood to be any sort of technological utilization or manipulation of
technology which goes above and beyond the capabilities inherent to the design of a
given application. This usage attempts to maintain neutrality, as opposed to the
politically charged and often contentious terms White Hat hacking, which is
designated as "hacking" motivated exclusively by good intentions (e.g. enhancing the
performance of a device or exposing the vulnerabilities of a security system for the
benefit of the system administrator), or Black Hat hacking, which is designated as
"hacking" motivated exclusively by bad or selfish intentions (e.g. stealing useful
information or exacting technological revenge through sabotage). The usual divide
between illegal and legal hacking is made between “white hat hackers” and “black hat
hackers” (2006: The hacker Quarterly). According to the Jargon File (2006) these
terms derive from the dress code of formulaic Westerns, in which the bad guys wore
black hats and the good guys white ones.
Hackers also differ depending on their hacking skills. In the figure 1 I have combined
descriptions of hackers’ inventiveness from various sources.
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Figure 1: Defining the dimensions of hackers inventiveness
First, hackers are seen to represent innovativeness with technology on two different
dimensions, software and hardware. Software hackers are highly skilled
programmers while hardware hackers are hardware modifiers. This divide
incorporates two dimension into the matrix, inventiveness related to the platform /
hardware and inventiveness related to the applications / software.
“Script Kiddies” and “Wannabe hackers” are at the lowest level of the hacker social
order (Mayer 1989). While they are not skillful enough to innovate themselves, they
use tools provided by other more skilled hackers. The term script kiddy has typically
referred to a malicious hacker, or a wannabe cracker who forces their way into
computer systems (Mollick 2002; Know Your Enemy 2000). Raymond (2001) adds
Higher
“Elite Hacker”
Ability to re-invent and expand a devices capability to perform outside of manufacturer’s technical or legal specifications
How: Re-writing and reverse engineering firmware, device drivers and circuit level code
“Programmer / Coder”
Ability to create new computer code and programs rapidly and expertly
How: Creating programs for personal and public use.
“Modder”
Ability to create technical and aesthetical modifications to products enabling added functionality and looks
How: adding memory, storage, LED’s, stickers, general accessorizing
“Script Kiddy / Wannabe”
Use of ready-made tools like toolkits and action scripts to modify programs or devices functionality
How: using toolkits and action scripts to create extensions or added functionality
Higher
Lower
Inventiveness related to the applications / software
Inventivenessrelated to the
platform / hardware
18
that the highly derogatory term “Script kiddies” is often used to indicate those who
either claim to have far more skill than they actually have, or who exclusively use
programs developed by others to achieve a successful security exploit. Voiskounsky &
Smyslova (2003 ,178) stated that when a inexperienced hacker increases his/hers
own hacking challenge he becomes a wannabe hacker whose rewards are getting
noticed by other more skilled hackers.
“Programmer / Coder” refers to a hacker that has expertise in writing computer code
rapidly and expertly. According to the Jargon File (2003) , a hacker is a person who
is good at programming quickly. Raymond (2001) writes in his essay “How To
Become A Hacker” that learning to program is the fundamental hacking skill and
further, in order to gain more status and reputation as a hacker, one has to
specifically write open source software.
Another type of hacker is one who creates novel hardware modifications, “a modder”.
At the most basic end of this spectrum are those who make frequent changes to the
hardware in their computers using standard components, or make semi-cosmetic
themed modifications to the appearance of the machine. This type of Hacker modifes
his/her computer for performance needs and/or aesthetics. These changes often
include adding memory, storage or LEDs and cold cathode tubes for light effects.
(Hardware hacker 2006)
“Elite Hacker” is a term that refers to someone who has the ability to write circuit-
level code, device drivers, firmware, and low-level networking, and uses these
techniques to make devices do things outside of their specifications. Elite Hackers
are typically in very high regard among hacker communities. This is primarily due to
the enormous difficulty, complexity and specialized domain knowledge required for
this type of work, as well as the electrical engineering expertise that plays a large role.
Such hackers are rare, and almost always considered to be “wizards” or “gurus” of a
very high degree. (Hacker 2006)
It has to be noted that the matrix presented here is a simplification. As a simplified
model it helps to understand different dimensions of hackers’ innovativeness
towards technology but the model also has its limitations. The definitions presented
19
in the matrix are flexible and overlapping. The important thing to realize is that the
term “hacker” can be used to represent a wide array of users and innovations.
3 SOCIAL SHAPING OF INNOVATION
This chapter places users in an active role in the innovation process and new product
development. The interaction between users and producers is then placed into a
larger sociotechnical framework within the theory of the social construction of
technology. The aim of this chapter is to help understand what roles users have in the
innovation process and how technology is socially and culturally constructed.
3.1 User’s roles in the innovation process
In the 1980’s and 1990’s the old view of users as passive consumers was largely
replaced in some areas of technology studies, along with the linear model of
technological innovation and diffusion (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003, 3). In the linear
diffusion models the users role was to passively adopt new technologies while
innovation was restricted to research and development and stopped when the
product left the laboratory (Williams et all. 2005, 53). Later on, this way of
downplaying the role of users led to technological determinism which has been
largely criticized in science and technology studies (Merrit & Marx 1994).
By bringing in social and cultural factors to the innovation process in product
development one can acquire a richer view of the roles of the user. This why the
classical linear product development processes (e.g. Ulrich and Eppinger 1995) are
not discussed here further. Moisander (2005) describes the cultural approach to
product development as a view that emphasizes the users role in the innovation
process, as it implies that the only way to understand consuming and producing is to
see it as a dynamic process between consumers and producers where ideas and
culturally shared representations materialize in to cultural artifacts.
The innovation process in which the user’s role is defined in this chapter consists of
three phases. The first phase is where product developers create new products, the
20
second is bringing the new product to the marketplace and the third is creating
something new based on the experiences and knowledge acquired from users in the
marketplace. In each of these stages users have a different and important role. With
the help of these three different phases I have also divided the roles of the users into
three: the imagined user at the development stage prior to the market introduction,
the emerging user after the market introduction and the creative user in the stage
where new knowledge is created by the users that is then used as input for new
innovations.
The following sub-chapters will go through the relevant theories about the user’s role
in each of these stages.
3.1.1 The imagined user
Before new innovations as in new products, services or technologies can enter into
existence, an imagined user is created by the innovator and incorporated in to the
design of the innovation (Akrich 1995).
According to Akrich (1995) there are two ways, explicit and implicit, that innovators
create imagined user representations. Explicit techniques are often “legitimized” in a
corporate environment and rely on market surveys, consumer testing and feedback
on experience. However, all of these methods they have weaknesses when put in use.
Market surveys may be used to identify potential buyers or add sales arguments but
they have very little to do with design and development of the actual product and
they can be used merely to convince company management about a need to build up
a project. Trott (2001) follows this view and states that market research should be
used as a method that helps the decision process, not as a tool that provides
managerial solutions. Akrich (1995, 172) argues that consumer testing is used to
minimize the number of dissatisfied users while assuming the existence of an average
standard of taste and the feedback on experience is usually filtered twice, first by the
users themselves who pass only remarks that they think are relevant with the system
itself or with its agents; and then by the latter for similar reasons.
Akrich (1995) continues that the less “legitimized” but in fact dominating implicit
techniques actually address real users but rely on spokespersons of three general
21
types: self-experience, expert consultants and other products. Other products can be
used as a reference of benchmarking while the outside “experts” can be used as
consultants to bring in the experience of users. Self-experience is when a designer
takes the role of the user by replacing his professional self with a layman; this
typically occurs when there is no other available mean of bringing in the end user.
Akrich calls this method the “I”.
Kotro (2005) built up from the concept of the “I” and proposed “hobbyism” and
“hobbyist knowledge” to describe how insights, values and ideals from hobbyist
communities were transferred to actual products through product development in
the Suunto corporation. While Akrich (1995, 173) noted that the “I” was coined when
the product developer or designer took the “hat” of a layman, hobbyist knowledge
was created when product developers and marketers were participating and learning
extreme sports “in situ” and took the knowledge and insights with them back to
inside the organizational frame of the manufacturer.
3.1.2 The emerging user
As real users encounter the new products brought to the market and apply them in
practice, they also transform their own lives accordingly, in the direction pointed by
the products (Pantzar 2000, 3).
New consuming practices emerge from new products and these practices and their
consequences are not always predictable by the innovator. The bicycle for example,
became a source for women’s emancipation, as the skirt was impracticable to ride a
bike with (Bijker 1995). Thomas Edison, who invented the early phonograph never
imagined ordinary people as its users because the machine was to be used as a
business dictating machine (Carlsson 1999, 182). As seen above, the consuming
practices that are born along with products may or may not be in line with
manufacturers views of correct consumption.
When the personal computer started to domesticate in the 1970’s it created a set of
“appropriate” and “inappropriate” uses connected to the ideals mainly around
gender and family (Reed 2000). It was acceptable for boys to be interested in
22
computer technology while storing cooking recipes was almost the only appropriate
use of computers for housewifes. As home computers and computer networks further
domesticated into homes, they created entire consumer counter-cultures around
services like Napster as it introduced a new technology to get music from other
people through the Internet (Desmond et al. 2000, 266). As Williams et al. (2005,
57) sum up, domestication refers to ways in which an artefacts technical capabilities
are explored, meanings attributed and practices developed as artefacts are integrated
into local social settings.
When products domesticate in the marketplace after their market introduction the
users’ role also goes through a transformation. Pantzar (1996, 2000, 2003) studied
the histories of several emerging product technologies and concluded that a product
has never been “ready” when it is brought to the marketplace in either its technical or
social aspects. As novel products domesticate after they are brought to the markets
the users and their motives for product choice, along with the function of the product,
are transformed in the course of this domestication lifecycle. According to the studies
of Pantzar (1996) the changing relationship of the consumer to a new commodity can
be seen as a three stage process in what he calls consumption as “play”, then as
“work” and finally “art”, where in the final “art” phase consumption becomes critical
and creative. In the next section, this creativity related to consumers is studied
further.
3.1.3 The creative user
While imagined users are represented in the product designs and new users emerge
as new products domesticate in the marketplace, users can also provide creative and
resourceful inputs for new product innovations. According to von Hippel (2005, 19)
the idea that manufacturers, not users, develop novel product innovations is
ingrained in both traditional expectations and scholarship. In many cases however,
the user becomes a manufacturer to fulfill one’s own needs for customized products.
Von Hippel (2005, 22) argues that the major finding of empirical research into
innovation by users is that the most commercially attractive user-developed products
and product modifications are developed by users with “lead user” characteristics.
23
According to von Hippel (1986), lead users are defined as members of a user
population having two distinguishing characteristics: 1. they anticipate relatively
high benefits from obtaining a solution for their needs and 2. they are at the leading
edge of an important market trend(s), and so are currently experiencing needs that
will later be experienced by many users in that market.
The idea that a group of users is ahead of market trends and is experiencing needs
that will later be experienced by many in the marketplace is well known in the course
of linear innovation diffusion studies. Rogers (1962) divided users in different
adopter categories according to their ability and willingness to adopt new products or
ideas. Potential users could be categorized as innovators, early adopters, early
majority, late majority and laggards based on their ability to adopt innovations.
Innovators were the first to adapt new inventions and in some cases they also had the
ability to innovate themselves. Rogers and Rice (1980, 500-501) further defined re-
inventions as a degree to which an innovation is changed or modified by a user in the
process of it’s adoption or implementation, but did not specify further the role of re-
inventions in the diffusion process of innovations. Flecks’s (1988) concept of
innofusion - as in innovation in diffusion - contested the linear views of diffusion and
argued that the process of innovation continued as artefacts were brought to the
marketplace, but his studies were limited to industrial products while ignoring users
as in individual consumers.
Du Gay (1997) stated that consumer practices also create input for producers and
manufacturers. This is done in an ongoing cycle of commodification – where
producers make new products or new versions of old products as a result of
consumers’ activities – and appropriation – where consumers make those products
meaningful. Sometimes this creates a new ”register” of meaning for artefact that
affect production in some way. In this sense, the meanings that products have are
constructed in this process of dialogue between production and consumption. (du
Gay 1997, 103). Each new consumer technology, in other words, both sustains
culture and produces or reproduces cultures creating what du Gay (1997, 23) calls a
circuit of culture illustrated in the figure 2.
24
Shove and Pantzar (2005, 60) argued that the concept of re-invention can also be
cultural and it is highly useful when studying successive emerging practices.
Practices require continual reproduction since the companies can make consumer
artifacts such as Nordic walking sticks, but in contrast they can’t make the practice of
consuming happen.
Akrich (1992) named consuming practices as “scripts”. She emphasized that as
designers and product developers “inscribe” their visions of the future users in the
technical content of the new object create a “script” for consumption but it’s often the
innovative consumer who determines or defines the transcripts for new commodities,
which then become established. Pantzar (2003) further stated that scripts can be
divided into “open” and “closed” according to their tolerance to be challenged by
users. The washing machine for example was characterized from the start by a
closed script which restricted any consumer interventions in the product where
advisory organizations together with manufacturers, advertisers and the press
established “almost a national guideline for the usage, placement and appearance of
washing machines” (Pantzar 1996, 91).
As seen throughout this chapter, users, whether as in imagined representations,
emerging through domestication processes or as part of the creation of new
identity regulation
representation
consumption production
Figure 2: The circle of culture Source: du Gay 1997, 23
25
innovations, play an important part in the innovation process. The next chapter
proves that users are also powerful actors in technological change. Each new
technology has a particular set of practices associated with it – a way of using them, a
set of knowledge, or know-how, that is sometimes called a social technology (du Gay
1997, 23). In the next chapter the importance of this social aspect of technology is
studied further.
3.2 Social construction of technology
One of the first approaches to draw deep understanding to users and also non-users
in technological change was the model of social construction of technology
(Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003, 3).
Social construction of technology (SCOT) is an approach to technology studies by
Pinch and Bijker (1984) which was created to describe the dynamic development
process of technological artefacts where users are the agents for technological change.
The main emphasis in this model is the social aspect of the development process so
that technological artefacts are constructed and ultimately assembled between
different social groups. According to Pinch and Bijker (1995) the advantage of SCOT
over the other models of technological development is that it combines the
technological and non-technological aspects of the artefacts development process.
According to the SCOT methodology, different social groups can construct radically
different meanings of technology. Bijker (1995, 50) for example illustrated the
development of the current design of “modern” bicycles “through the eyes” of the
members of relevant social groups of users and non-users of different bicycle designs
in history. One design that had a big front wheel, called the Ordinary bicycle, was
“non-working” for elderly people but for young athletic men it was “working”.
Different social groups constructed radically different meanings for the Ordinary as
each social group had different problems with the artifact. With this, Bijker (1995,
52) wanted to emphasize that artifacts have a fluid and ever changing character. Each
problem and each solution, as soon as they are perceived by a relevant social group,
changes the artifacts meaning, whether a solution to those problems is implemented
or not.
26
The changing meaning of an artifact came to be known as technology’s interpretative
flexibility. Bijker (1995, 75) deconstructed the Ordinary bicycle into different artifacts
and argued that it was a “macho bicycle” or an “unsafe bicycle” depending on the
social group evaluating the artifact. The “working” and “unworking” of an artifact
was then a socially and culturally constructed assessment, rather than being based
on intrinsic properties of the artifact. One artifact comprises different socially
constructed artifacts, some of which may be “working” while others are “non-
working”.
Pinch and Bijker (1995) stated further that the technologies that fail have to be taken
into account when analyzing the development of an artefact so that the level of
analysis would be symmetrical. When only winning products and artefacts are taken
into account in the history of technology, the level of analysis is asymmetrical and
can lead to implicit adoption of a linear technological development also known as
technological determinism.
Pinch and Kline (1996, 774–775) elaborated on the original SCOT model by pointing
out that the way a product is interpreted is not restricted to the design stage of a
technology, but can also continue during the product’s use. They illustrated this
point with the case of the automobile and how manufacturers adopted some of the
rural users’ innovations, generally after a lag. For example, a car that could also serve
as a small truck was first re-engineered by some farmers and eventually offered as a
commercial product by manufacturers.
In the next sub-chapters, the components of the SCOT-model will be reviewed along
with some examples. These elements are then used to build up my theoretical
research framework in chapter 4.
3.2.1 Relevant social groups
To understand the development of technology as a social process, it is crucial to take
the artifacts as they are viewed by the relevant social groups (Bijker 1995, 49).
Relevant social groups consist of heterogeneous groups of people that have similar
27
Social group
Social group
Social group
Artefact
Problem
Problem
Problem
Problem
Social group
Figure 4: Artifacts are described by focusing on the problems perceived by the relevant social groups
Source: Bijker (1995, 51)
views of the technology that they have feelings towards. The way that relevant social
groups can be identified and described is by “rolling the snowball” and then by
“following the actor” (Ibid. 46).
By “rolling a snowball”, Bijker (1995, 46) identified social groups that were relevant
with respect to the specific artefact, the bicycle, by noting all social groups mentioned
in relation to that artifact in historical documents. By using the snowball technique
the first list of relevant social groups could then be made. When after some time the
researcher does not find reference to new groups, it is clear that all relevant social
groups have been identified. Using this as a starting point, the researcher can then
“follow the actor” to learn more details about the identified social groups and
delineate them from other relevant social groups.
Figure 3: Related to an artifact, the relevant social groups are identified. Source: Bijker (1995, 47)
28
Problem
Solution
Solution Solution
Solution
After identifying relevant social groups, the focus turns to the problems and solutions
related to the artifact. Bijker (1995, 50-51) argues that there are two reasons why this
has to be done. First, it helps to avoid implicit linearity in technological development
where, for example, one artefact can be said to represent the “first modern bicycle”
where the problems and solutions and the impact of other bicycle designs are ignored
as they are retrospectively seen to have failed. Secondly, the variation and selection
on the levels of problems and solutions can help to cast an evolutionary model. When
the relevant social groups see a variety of problems, a new variety of solutions are
then generated and some of these solutions are selected to yield new artifacts (Bijker
1995, 51).
3.2.2 Interpretative flexibility
According to the social-constructivist view technological artefacts are culturally
constructed and interpreted: in other words, the interpretative flexibility of a
technological artifact must be shown in order to build a social construction. This can
be done by showing how, for different social groups, the artifact presents itself as
essentially different artifacts. (Bijker 1995, 76)
Bijker (1995, 75) demonstrated how the early bicycle was seen as different artifact
based on different social groups evaluating it and its uses. The young athletic users
saw the big-wheeled bicycle differently as elderly men and other users. This way the
big front-wheeled bicycle was deconstructed to two different artifacts. It was an
Figure 5: The solutions are described that are seen as available to each of the perceived problems
Source: Bijker (1995, 52)
29
Unsafe Bicycle for elderly men and to non-users and a Macho Bicycle for athletic
young men. This difference in how these social groups saw one artefact allowed for
an explanation that for the “working” and “non-working” of technology there was no
universal culture-independent criterion.
3.2.3 Closure and stabilization
Closure, in the analysis of technology, means that the interpretative flexibility of an
artifact diminishes. Consensus among the different relevant social groups about the
dominant meaning of an artifact emerges (Bijker 1995, 86).
History offers many examples of the closure and the stabilization of technology. The
way that the QWERTY-keyboard layout for computers stabilized is an illustrative
example. The QWERTY-layout was first used when commercial typewriters emerged
and was specifically made to keep the typing speed low to keep the most used
alphabets as far away from each other as possible (Perdue 1994). As this type of
keyboard layout became widespread by typewriter manufacturers the users had to
adapt to it. This kind of closure did lead to a decrease of interpretative flexibility –
one design, the QWERTY keyboard lay-out, became dominant and others for the
most part ceased to exist.
Bijker (1995, 84) describes in his study of the development of the bicycle how for
example the air tire and “safety ordinary” reached closure as one group of users saw
the earlier designs too dangerous and hard to use. As part of the same movement,
the dominant artifact developed as an increasing stabilization among the relevant
social groups other than “young men of means and nerve” who were physically fit
enough to ride the bicycle with a big front wheel.
3.2.4 Technological Frame
According to Bijker (1995, 123) the concept of ”technological frame” can help to
capture the diversity of interactions among individual actors inside a relevant social
group and also the interactions between the relevant social groups.
30
The theoretical concept of technological frame of a social group is employed to
explain the interactions within and between social groups that shape the artifacts:
these technological frames shape and are shaped by these interactions (Bijker 1987).
A technological frame is built when interaction ”around” an artifact begins. If the
interactions move actors of the social group in the same direction, a technological
frame will build up; if not, there will be no frame, no relevant social group and no
future interaction. (Bijker 1995, 123). To describe a technological frame, Bijker (1995,
125) presented a tentative list of its elements:
- Goals
- Key problems
- Problem solving strategies
- Requirements to be met by problem solutions
- Current Theories
- Tacit Knowledge
- Testing procedures
- Design method and criteria
- User’s practice
- Perceived substition function
- Exemplary artifacts
According to Bijker (1995, 125) the list of technological frame elements can only be
tentative. In each new case, in each new relevant social group, additional elements
may need to be incorporated or taken out from the list to give an adequate
interpretation of the interactions.
4 THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
This chapter will present the theoretical research framework that is used to guide the
empirical research in this thesis.
As a result of the literature review in this thesis, it was proved that the users, whether
real or imagined, have much impact on how new products and technologies are
31
consumed and taken into everyday use. Manufacturers have their own ways of
bringing in the end user into a product development process, but the users ultimately
make products successful and meaningful.
The aim of this thesis is now to approach users’ interaction with technology from
cultural and social viewpoints. As a result of my literature review, my understanding
is that the social construction of technology provides the best and most complete
theoretical tools for preparing a thorough view of the development process of the
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This is because the social construction of technology
(SCOT) -model emphasizes the role of the users who in turn play an important role
in the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet due to its “hackability” and open
source development approach.
32
Figure 6: Theoretical research framework
Figure 6 visualizes my theoretical research framework used in this study. The
empirical part of this study attempts to understand how different social groups
interact around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and what are the problems and
solutions that encourage actors into this interaction. The social construction of
Define technologicalframes =
interactions around the artifact
Social group
770Internettablet
Problem Problem
Problem
Social group
Solution
Solution
Solution
SolutionProblem
ProblemProblem
Solution
Solution
Demonstrate interpretative flexibility =
different views of the artifact
Look for closure & stabilization =Interpretative
flexibility diminishes
Users’ roles in the different phases in the
development of the product
33
technology serves as a starting point for understanding these interactions. In order
to build a social construction, the first task is to identify the relevant social groups
related to the artifact. Then by focusing on the problems and solutions of these social
groups, build a technological frame on the interactions around the artefact and
demonstrate if there is interpretative flexibility in how the artifact is seen by the
actors of relevant social groups. Closure and stabilization happens then if
interpretative flexibility towards the product diminishes and different social groups
see the product in a similar manner.
The criticism towards the SCOT-model has to also be taken into account when
conducting this study. Klein & Kleinman (2002, 34) wanted to further emphasize
the influence that actors and social groups have in the social construction. What they
believed missing in all of the case studies was the discussion of groups’ capacity or
power or what enables one group’s interpretation to be embodied in the artifact.
Following this view, Williams and Edge (1996) state that the final consumer may
have little opportunity to engage upon the development of a product other than the
“veto power” to adopt a product or not.
The criticism towards the SCOT-model has been taken into account in the empirical
part of this thesis by concentrating on the most powerful group of users, hackers,
whose engagement upon the product and its usage is not limited only to the veto
power to purchase a product or not.
5 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH PLAN
This section focuses on the methods of the empirical part of this study. It will explain
why the particular qualitative approach was used in this study and how the research
was conducted in order to reach the conclusions presented.
5.1 Research methods
The theoretical framework used in this study is adapted from the constructivist
approach to science and technology studies. The social construction of technology
34
model (Pinch and Bijker 1984) served as a framework for presenting rich case studies
of technological artifacts.
Stake (1995, 42) emphasizes that the constructivist approach used in case studies
encourages providing readers with ”thick description” for their own generalizing
about the subject or phenomenon. Thick description is not complexities objectively
described but rather particular subjective perceptions of the relevant actors. While
total objectivity towards the research subject might be impossible to achieve,
subjectivity is used as a tool to stimulate further reflection, optimizing reader’s
opportunity to learn. The researchers role is to organize the study to maximize the
opportunity for ”naturalistic generalization” through experiential learning. (Stake
1995)
Generally, qualitative research studies rely on three basic data gathering techniques:
participant observation, interviews, and social artifact content analysis (Wolcott
1995; 1999). A qualitative approach for this thesis was chosen because it presses for
understanding of the complex interrelationship among all that exists while
quantitative research presses for an explanation trough scale and measures (Stake
1995, 37). This also seemed feasible to the theoretical framework of this study, as the
goal is to gain more understanding of the involvement of innovative users, hackers,
in the different stages of product development through the social construction of one
particular technology, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This artifact was chosen
because it is a fairly new product, as it was launched in 2005, and it is the first
product of it’s kind for Nokia; a communication device using open source software
but at the same time it is not a GSM phone. Furthermore, it represents a new
approach to consumer technology as it has become a medium for hacker culture and
its innovations. By studying the artifact’s ”story” one can possibly learn a great deal
about the ways that a new kind of product development process works between the
product manufacturer and the innovating users and what was the role of ”hacking”
in the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet’s product development and in making sense of its
users.
The material and the insight to provide ”thick description” and ”experiential
understanding” as Stake (1995) calls it into this case study was brought by working as
35
a graduate trainee at Nokia’s open source product management division in Helsinki
15.5 – 29.09.2006. Working inside the product management division opened up the
possibility for participatory observation, which allows for observing while taking an
active role in the group being studied (Stake 1995).
5.2 Conducting the research
Following the methodology of SCOT and my theoretical framework, the first task in
the process of creating a social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was to
identify the relevant social groups that were then to be studied. I identified three
relevant social groups: the people involved with the development of the 770 Internet
Tablet inside Nokia, the users who were participating in the development of the
product and the non-users.
Next, I will briefly go over why these social groups are relevant for my analysis and
the method of how the data was collected from these groups.
Inside Nokia
It was self-evident that the individuals who took part in the product development
team of the 770 inside Nokia made up my first relevant social group. A total of 7
semi-structured interviews were made with the people who were involved in the
product’s development and marketing. The “snowball” method was used to get to
these contacts after I first approached the vice president of the Nokia’s convergence
products business group, the group that was in charge of the development of the 770
Internet Tablet. The snowball method basically means identifying important
interviewees by asking interviewees to name others with whom the researcher should
talk to (Bijker 1995, 46).
The “snowballing” started as the vice president of the business group who was in
charge of the 770 platform replied to my email and gave me the first contact, a
director of open source platforms in Tampere who then gave the contacts of a senior
R&D manager in Helsinki. From him I went on to a program manager in Oulu. Based
36
on these interviews I managed to get a good overview of the challenges that Nokia
was involved with in this product development project and what was most important
to this thesis, I also received a graduate trainee position to work on a target user
project which was to provide input for innovations and new ideas to the product
development and marketing of the Internet Tablet product line. Four more
interviews were made as I worked in the software product management of the 770
Internet Tablet making up a total of seven interviews inside Nokia.
1. Director, Open Software Platform
2. Senior Manager, R&D
3. Product Program Manager
4. Senior Product Manager
5. Senior Project Manager (Symbian Platform)
6. Product Manager, Marketing
7. Senior Manager, Product Marketing
All the interviews were made in a semi-structured manner to bring about a more
natural feel to the situation and to encourage free discussion around the subject. I
was prepared for the interviews with a list of questions but I also let the interviewees
lead the discussion when I felt that it was going in an interesting direction. In general,
my questions were about the interviewee’s role in the 770 product, then questions
about the markets and users, followed by questions about the product and its
development.
After the interviews that I conducted, I felt that not many new ideas were coming out
anymore. In addition to conducting interviews I was constantly participating in
situations were I could collect material through observations and discussions that
went on considering the product, as a result the interviews were not the only source
for analysis. This gave more insight to the research subject that would have been
possible to acquire only by conducting interviews.
37
The users – hackers and geeks
For the second relevant social group I turned my attention to users. Bijker (1995, 46)
states that relevant social groups can be described by following two rules: “roll a
snowball” and “follow the actor”. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet proved to be an
interesting study subject, due to the open source Linux operating system, which
enabled the view inside Nokia that the current adopters of the product were mainly
“hackers” and “geeks”.
JM:
In your view, who are the current users of the 770 internet tablet product?
At the moment I would say that they are these very early adopters of
technology.
[Interviewee 6, product manager (marketing)]
They are beyond early adopters, they are extreme hackers doing amazing
things with our product.
[Interviewee 2, senior R&D manager]
They are these geeks..linux geeks who like to hack the product
[Interviewee 3, product program manager]
Developers, geeks and technology leaders. This is mainly because the product
concept is totally new. The maturity of the product is still low. The product has
not been marketed so that’s why it has not diffused beyond those people
mentioned.
[Interviewee 4, senior product manager]
As demonstrated in the second chapter, not all hackers are alike and others are more
innovative than others. The more innovative the hacker, the more powerful he/she is
as an actor and more relevant a member of the social group. Among the users of the
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the most innovating and most power ones were to be
identified. This was done by observing popular online communities and discussion
forums dealing with issues around the 770 Internet Tablet and by finding out what
38
were the most popular user made applications for the device and which of them had
created most discussion and “buzz” on the Internet. With this method, I found five
applications that were the most discussed on the Internet and the three users behind
these applications.
The first person contacted, John “Gnuite” Costigan was the user who had created a
program called Maemo Mapper for the 770 Internet Tablet. Maemo mapper is an
application that turns the 770 into a GPS-navigator. It downloads maps from the
internet and when used with a GPS-receiver it shows information of the whereabouts
of its user. What is notable in this application, is that in its user license it has been
very clearly pointed out that using the program might violate copyright laws when
downloading maps from Google maps or other commercial services.
Second contact was Urho Konttori who had made two popular homebrew
applications for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Media converter is a program that
let’s users convert videos from their computer to a format that is supported by the
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This has to be done as the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has a
limited amount of media formats that it supports since the device was not intended
for media usage. In addition to the media converter, Urho Konttori has also made a
program called theme maker that can be used to customize the graphics, fonts and
the general look of the user interface of the device.
Final contact, Tomas Junnonen, had made a Bluetooth plugin and ported a
SCUMMVM application for the 770 Internet Tablet. The Bluetooth plugin could be
used to connect a keyboard using the wireless Bluetooth technology improving the
input methods of the device and SCUMMVM is an application that can be used to
play old LucasArts computer games on the device. What came as a surprise for me
when contacting Tomas Junnonen was tha he was also working for Nokia. The
reason why this was a surprise was because his “hacks” were distributed at his
personal website titled “hacking the 770” and there was no mentioning of the fact
that he was actually working for Nokia. After identifying the users behind the five
most downloaded and discussed applications, I contacted the developers by email
and then conducted the interviews with an instant messaging program and captured
the logs of these interviews.
39
8. John “Gnuite” Costigan
9. Urho Konttori
10. Tomas Junnonen
Non-users – also relevant for the analysis
As for the selection of the third relevant social group, Bijker (1995) states that the
non-users have to be taken into account to achieve a ”symmetrical” view of the social
construction of the technology that is studied. The relevant non-users were
recognized through a study that I was working on in Nokia while preparing this
thesis. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was a product meant for internet usage so the
starting point was that these non-users had to be internet users. After this, four
advanced internet users who kept weblogs and used the latest internet services were
selected for interviews. The criteria for being an advanced Internet user were that the
interviewees all kept a public weblog and were users of various social networking
services in the Internet.
11. Isko Salminen
12. Herkko Hietanen
13. “Digital Gopher” (pseudonym)
14. Jyri Engeström
15. Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor
In addition to these non-users, one more interviewee who could be described as a
member of the social group of hackers was identified and interviewed. This was done
to achieve knowledge about an innovating user who could be described as a hacker
but who was not a user of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The final interviewee of the
non-users group was Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor. He had developed a homebrew
program called DSOrganize for the Nintendo DS gaming device that made the
gaming device to work as a personal digital assistant by adding calendar and email
functionalities to the product. With this “hack”, Dragonminded had become one of
the most known hackers of the Nintendo DS. He was contacted by email and
interviewed with an instant messenger program.
40
In conclusion, eight Nokia employees and seven others were interviewed making a
total of fifteen interviews. Out of those fifteen interviews, six interviews were
conducted with an instant messaging program and the chat logs of the interviews
were captured. The rest of the interviews were recorded on a digital sound recorded.
As was mentioned earlier, in addition to the interviews, informal discussions and
meetings provided a lot of material for this case study as did observations made from
the discussion groups, weblogs and websites considering issues around the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet in the Internet
6 THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET
This chapter first introduces the case subject, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and
then follows its development from the birth of the product to market launch, and
finally to how users referring to themselves as hackers reinvented the product to
better suit their needs. Along with this chapter, the social construction of the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet is developed through the elements of the SCOT-model to better
understand the input of user innovators in the shaping process of the this artifact.
Finally, based on the findings in this thesis, a theoretical concept, ”hacker-hobbyism”,
is proposed to describe the innovation activity around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
6.1 Nokia and the challenges of open source Internet Tablet
Nokia has been one of the most successful corporations in the mobile phone
industry. It was the first firm in the industry to reinvent its products as a branded
good at the high end of cultural industries (Pantzar & Ainamo 2004, 83) and before
that, the decision to concentrate on mobile phone technology, especially to the GSM
standard, was the basis of Nokia’s future success (Häikiö 2001).
Communication technologies, along with the portable electronics industry, are now
facing rapid changes. The Internet is making it possible to communicate globally
with text, voice and multimedia with a near flat rate fee all over the world. On the
other hand, mobile phones and other portable electronics are now turning into
versatile multimedia devices capable of handling rich media content like music,
41
pictures, video, games and even wireless internet access, all contained in a single
device. Only educated guesses exist as to what kind of device will become a cultural
icon for the next generation of mobile lifestyle. In the 1960’s and 1970’s it was a
portable radio kit, in the 1980’ it was the Sony Walkman which was then followed by
the Nintendo “Gameboy generation”, then cell phones invaded the market of
portable technology in the late 1990’s (Weber 2005). After the year 2000, it seems
that, at least for a moment, the Apple iPod has became the cultural icon of portable
electronics (Kahney 2005). Nokia’s goal with the 770 Internet Tablet is to capitalize
on the current “Internet revolution” by making a non-cellular connected product for
consumers’ home and mobile use.
This case study of the Nokia 770 internet tablet contributes to this thesis in more
than one way. First, the Nokia 770 provides an opportunity to study the development
process of a totally new product. It is Nokia’s first entry in the communication device
market without utilizing GSM-technology. With this product, Nokia is focusing on
capitalizing on the promise of new mobile internet. The 770 Internet Tablet is not a
mobile phone nor its peripheral but rather a portable internet tablet with a touch
screen utilizing wireless local area networks (WLAN) or Bluetooth technology
through a mobile phone to connect to the Internet. Since it does not necessarily need
a mobile carrier network to function, its distribution and marketing methods are
different compared to mobile phones. The cellular operators’ interest in subsidizing
the products price or promoting it is different from a mobile phone since the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet does not support the operators’ business model as do mobile
phones. This was one reason why the 770 Internet Tablet became the first product
that is sold directly trough Nokia’s website.
Second, the 770 Internet Tablet is Nokia’s first and currently only mobile
communication device that uses Linux as its operating system, and as such is
published under an open source license. Without going too much into the technical
details of open source, it is sufficient to say that in the scope of this thesis the open
source license assures that users and programmers have the following rights with the
program that is licensed under the open source license (Markus & Manville 2000,
20):
42
The right to make copies of the program, and distribute these copies
The right to have access to the software’s source code, a necessary
preliminary before you can change it
The right to make improvements to the programs and to distribute them.
By making the product’s operating system open source and releasing and application
development environment called Maemo, Nokia made it possible to become involved
in a dialogue with hobbyists and use their expertise and insights to further develop
the product and its functionalities.
I will next start to develop the technological frame of Nokia, that according to Bijker
(1995, 122) illustrates how interactions around artifact are structured. The problems
and solutions that Nokia is dealing with regarding the 770 Internet Tablet defines the
interactions around the artifact. In the next sub-chapters, the main challenges of
developing a new product category with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet are presented.
6.1.1 The software challenge
The first thing that stood out in the interviews conducted with Nokia managers was
that due to the rich functionalities of the multimedia mobile phones, the software
that is used to operate the products is becoming increasingly important. The
competition between other portable products is becoming more intense, so software
is one important way to differentiate Nokia’s products from competitors’ products.
In order to do this, Nokia has now turn itself into more of a software company that
has to be able to create novel and complex software rapidly and professionally.
Currently there are two main operating systems, Symbian and Linux, used in the
multimedia products that Nokia manufactures. The Symbian operating system is a
joint venture among the top companies in the mobile phone industry and is currently
owned by Ericsson (with 15.6% of the shares), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%),
Samsung (4.5%), Siemens AG (8.4%), and Sony Ericsson (13.1%) (Symbian, 2006).
Symbian is based on open standards, but is not an open source product, as the source
code is not publicly available. Linux, on the other hand, is open source software that
is developed further by the open source community that works and communicates
43
through the Internet. The 770 Internet Tablet is Nokia’s first consumer
communication product to use the Linux based operating system. The interviewees
emphasized the importance and meaning of Linux and open source in the
development process of the 770 Internet Tablet.
JM: What is the meaning of the open source based 770 for the Nokia’s product
development?
It is a big change.
[Interviewee 3, product project manager]
Using open source software enabled us to move faster, much faster in our
product creation than with other software platforms [symbian] and moving
faster means saving money. When starting something from scratch there is
usually no agreements made until 6 months due to NDA’s and intellectual
property rights questions but these are already taken care of in open source
with the licenses like the GPL and others. So, Instead of long negotiations open
source starts faster. This was never thought of before.
[Interviewee 1, director of Open Software Platform]
I believe that the 770 revolutionaries the way new products are created inside
Nokia.
[Interviewee 2, Senior R&D manager]
For Nokia, the utilization of open source means that they did not have to create their
own operating system software from scratch to run the device, rather an operating
system based on the Linux was created. This made it possible to develop the new
product much faster compared to mobile phones.
The open source development model that Nokia uses in its 770 Internet Tablet is a
mixture of social and technical elements. Jaaksi (A Strategy 2006) specifies the
uniqueness of Nokia’s open source development strategy in his weblog by defining
the possibilities of the interaction between the manufacturer and the open source
user communities by separating four different scenarios surrounding how companies
can collaborate with open source communities.
44
On the vertical axis of the figure 7 Jaaksi (A strategy 2006) makes the distinction
between open & native development and closed or sandbox development. On the
more open model, in which the Nokia 770 currently is currently placed, native
application development and system hacking is possible. The closed development
model, on the other hand, supports only application “sandboxes” on top of the
software, which restricts the access to the lower level software core. The horizontal
axis creates a distinction between utilizing Linux distributions and companies as
proxies from the “go to the source” approach, which means operating directly in open
source communities without using companies as proxies who take care of the details
of open source on Nokia’s behalf.
Figure 7: Open source development matrix Source: Ari Jaaksi’s Blog, 2006
Figure 8: Nokia and Motorola on the open source development matrix Source: Ari Jaaksi's Blog, 2005
Nokia
Motorola
45
Jaaksi (ibid.) emphasizes that there are no right or wrong places to be on the matrix
presented. There are just different open source software strategies, and that the
important thing is to know where actors are positioned in the matrix. As presented,
Nokia’s competitor Motorola has a very different strategy in utilizing Linux software
and open source development model than Nokia has with their 770 Internet Tablet.
Motorola uses commercial Linux distributions of the software, thereby making native
application development, “hacking”, impossible.
6.1.2 The operator challenge
In many cases, it is the carriers that ultimately decide which functionalities
are implemented to the new mobile phones.
[Interviewee 1, Director of open software platform]
The second challenge to Nokia that rose up from the discussions was the symbiotic
relationship with the cellular network operators that the mobile phone
manufacturers had to get used to. In many key market areas, North America for
example, the cellular network operators first buy phones from manufacturers like
Nokia, and then they offer them to customers at subsidized price while locking
customers into their networks for a certain amount of time. While this gives
customers easy and inexpensive access to new phone models, the downside for the
manufacturers is that the operators are keen to subsidize products that add value to
their business models, and in this way they have bargaining power over the features
and technology contained in upcoming products. Jaaksi (2005) explains in his
weblog why the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is not a cell phone:
Cellular operators, who are the most important channel to markets, are
demanding – they have tons of requirements for phones. Also, end users
expect a very high level of maturity. Mandatory requirements for cell phones,
such as type approvals, operator requirements, legislative requirements,
operator subsidies, and other such elements make the business structure very
complicated. You cannot sell a phone without SMS, WAP, MMS, SIM lock, sync,
MIDP, 911 stuff, various approvals in different countries, and so on. (…)
Internet Tablets are different – they are new. Rules, markets, technology,
customers, partners, and channels to customers are new and still evolving
(It’s not a cell phone – and it’s good 2005)
46
Anssi Vanjoki, the president of Nokia’s multimedia group stated in an interview
(Wired 2005) that carriers’ activities can even prevent innovation. This happened
when a North American carrier, Verizon Wireless, decided not to support Bluetooth
technology so that when transferring pictures or other content from your mobile
phone to a computer, users would have to pay for using Verizon’s network.
Nokia’s 770 Internet Tablet is not attached to the operators’ business model in the
same manner as mobile phones. This was also mentioned as one of the reasons why
the Nokia 770 became the first product that Nokia started to sell through its website.
6.1.3 The market challenge
The third challenge is new competition and market landscapes that Nokia is now
entering with their new wave of portable computers like the 770 Internet Tablet.
Mobile gaming devices, music, media devices and ultra portable computers are all
posing new competition in addition to the existing competition from other mobile
phone manufacturers. Future generations of portable devices are expected to have
wireless Internet capabilities along with instant messaging and other social
functionalities that once were only accessible with a mobile phone through a carrier
network.
I would now say that we compete with these new UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PC’s)
more that with mobile phones…what we are trying to do here with the 770 is
to create a new category of products.
[Interviewee 6, product manager (marketing)]
We compete now with laptops…and maybe with some highly sophisticated linux
smartphones
[Interviewee 7, product manager (marketing)]
Even tough Nokia is the world’s leading mobile communication house, it has had its
own share of difficulties breaking into new markets beyond mobile phones.
In 2003, Nokia released the Nokia N-Gage mobile gaming system with great
expectations. Mobile gaming was supposed to be the next ”killer application” in
47
mobile phones preceded by the huge success of the Nintendo Gameboy gaming
device and partly because of the buzz created by the famous Nokia ”worm game”.
Nokia’s aim was to sell between six and nine million N-Gage units before the end of
2004 (Nokia figures claim massive n-gage sales 2003). However, in 2004 the CEO of
Nokia, Jorma Ollila told the Financial Times that sales had not been as expected and
it would take until 2005 before the success or failure of the platform can be properly
judged (Nokia fesses up poor n-gage sales 2004). In 2004, Ilkka Raiskinen, the head
of Nokia’s gaming section explained how risky it is to try to develop a new device
category:
The whole strategy is about being able to use those components which we
have anyway, and test whether we can create a good enough games
platform. Creating an optimal games device is easy - big screen, lots of
horsepower, big battery - but making money and creating a business case
that's viable, that's the tricky part. And now we are betting, or you might
want to say gambling, on the fact that we can build on our mobile phone
heritage in this space. (Ilkka Raiskinen on N-Gage 2004)
A new and improved version, the N-gage GQ was introduced in 2004 and flaws in the
original product were fixed, however it did not save the project. The head of Nokia’s
Multimedia organization Anssi Vanjoki stated that while the aim was to sell six
million units in three years, only one-third of that was actually sold and the product
was a failure (Nokia misses n-gage sales target by miles 2005). After that, the
dedicated N-Gage product line of gaming phones was ceased, and currently it serves
as a software platform for Nokia’s multimedia products upon which other companies
can develop games for.
With the 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia is now again in 2005 trying to establish and
promote a new product category called Internet Tablets, something that was not
successful with their last attempt with mobile gaming phones and the N-Gage. The
methods that are now used are however visibly different from the last time. Where as
with the N-Gage had big marketing campaigns, the 770 Internet Tablet was brought
to the markets very quietly.
48
6.2 The birth of the product
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was a product first started to develop around the year
2000. The concept was based on the vision that wireless internet technology (WLAN)
was about to come very big and that laptop computers and personal digital assistants
(PDA’s) were unable to answer consumer’s needs for the mobile internet (Forum 24
2006).
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet concept combined two development streams inside
Nokia into one project. One stream was a hardware concept of a portable widescreen
device made for Internet usage and the other stream was a Linux based open source
software product.
From my point of view, the idea for the 770 product was born somewhere
around 2000/2001 when I was working in special products department
doing standardizing things. We got WLAN cards to our product portfolio
and at the same time, we had to think about what else uses could there be for
WLAN other than data cards and business tools (communicators). I had
some experience from 3G/WLAN from my university studies so someone
happened to ask me... The concept was born in a brief moment of time. At
that time I was an avid stock-trader and hooked on stock markets and stock-
related news. I couldn’t came away from the PC or leave home. So, a
solution to my need had to be found. I then created a product concept named
“Darude”.
The “Darude” did not go into production in 2000 due to the screen
technology was not ready and WLAN penetration was not high enough. It
then took year or two and a concept that was born dead called “multipart”
come from somewhere. Multipart was a concept where you had a cellular
modem in pocket and an operating system around it. So, we [me and the
product program manager] saw an opportunity in this for the ”Darude” and
started to work with it.
[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]
At this point, the first problems related to the product concept that was the starting
point for the Nokia 770 can be connected. “Darude” and “Multipart” product
concepts did not go into production since the screen technology was not ready and
49
“Darude”product concept Screen technology
WLAN penetration
Nokia product development
“Multipart”product concept
Artefacts Social group
Problems
Symbian platform
the WLAN-technology penetration was not high enough. In the figure 9 I have
illustrated the first connections of the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet. What is also worth noticing is how personal interests like stock trading and
inability to move away from the PC were mentioned as a source for the needs that
created the “Darude” product concept. Following Akrich’s (1995, 173) definitions,
this was an implicit “I” method of representing the end user in the product design by
relying on personal experience.
Figure 9: Problems related to the product conceptsSource: Author
For a couple of months we tinkered with a Symbian platform and we
realized that we simply are not getting any kind of support for the project
due to the limited resources. At the same time a strategic decision was made
that Nokia will do a Linux product. The Linux team was looking for a
product and we had a product “without an operating system”. Looking now
backwards I have wondered many times that was this coincidence or a
strategy of someone wiser :)..and so, this was the start of the 770 Internet
Tablet
[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]
50
2000
Software update:OS 2006
May 16th
“Darude”
“Multipart”
2002 2003 2004 2006
May 25th 2005
After the market launchBefore the market launch
“Laika”
Product concepts not brought to the markets
20052001
According to the interviewees, the solution to a problem around the Symbian
operating system developed into the early Nokia 770 Internet tablet. With Linux, the
software development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet could start and move faster.
I addition to the “Darude” and “Multipart” concepts, a third concept that never made
it to the market called the “Laika” was also being developed in 2004 before the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet was brought to the market. The main feature of the “Laika” was
an integrated hard drive, something that the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet lacked.
According to the product manager who was in charge of the “Laika” concept, the time
was not ready for the product, and a management decision not to do a “media device”
was made because of the many products competing in the media device category.
Figure 9 shows when the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was brought to the market and
the timeline of its development along with the product concepts that didn’t make it to
the market. About one year after the market launch, Nokia published a software
update called OS 2006 that added the possibility to make internet phone calls and
use an instant messaging service called Google Talk, as well as a full screen touch-
keyboard to make text entry easier.
Figure 10: Timeline of the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
51
After reviewing the technological background of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the
envisioned users of the product and the role of market studies was discussed with the
interviewees.
We did not have that kind of educational background that we would have
troubled ourselves too much with any kind of target users. From the
beginning, the product was made with “let’s do it for us” mindset because
there had to be others like us with similar needs for sure. (…) Then when we
had to seriously think about this as there had to be some kind of input for
the marketing we concluded that the concept was “broad appeal” though we
did not use that term, but when we described as whom we see as the users
and it was broad appeal without any strict age segments.
[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]
The interviewee that was involved in making the product concepts stated that the
product was made with a “let’s make it for us” attitude. Again, this serves as a good
example of Akrich’s (1995) “I” method where the own persona serves as a starting
point for bringing in the end user of the product. What is also worth noting is that
how a “broad appeal” approach to a product’s target consumer was decided as there
had to be input for marketing to work on.
The role of market studies in this product’s development was interesting. According
to the interviewees, while there was end-user studies created for the Internet Tablet
concept that clearly showed that there was little or no interest in the concept, and
that their role was not significant in the final product. Interviewees said that this was
because in those studies, the products that were used were not functioning and the
users in the studies were PDA-users whose needs for a mobile product were different
than what the internet tablet product concept offered.
They [Nokia’s internal user insight organization] made an end user study
and the results were - according to the professionals – extremely
discouraging. The results were worst in the history of these end user studies.
(..) But [product program manager] made a lot of noise about these studies
since no real products were used… only mock-ups. The users were also PDA-
users so they had different kind of needs from a product than what the 770
could deliver.
[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]
52
Creating a compelling marketing message for the product was also a challenge.
Since the product was using Linux, the open source community developing the
operating system was an important group of potential customers of the product.
For this group of users, Nokia launched a developer website called Maemo.org.
According to the senior R&D manager, the early marketing material created to
promote the product and development environment was not usable since it did
not represent the right kind of message that Nokia was trying to send to the open
source community.
Lot of the marketing material that was produced was useless…it was like
that Nokia would came and take over the Linux world. It was just wrong
and it felt like the marketing department didn’t understand at all the
message we were trying to send.
[Interviewee 2, Senior R&D Manager]
In short, the product development process of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet from the
first product concept to the final product was a five-year process, driven by the vision
of mobile Internet penetration, and made with a very implicit way of envisioning the
end user of the product. User studies that were created with the products did not
significantly affect the products development even though the results of these studies
were discouraging.
Before the market launch of the product, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet had created a
lot discussion around the Internet due to its open source development model and the
non-phone approach to developing a new kind of communication device. The next
chapter goes through how the non-users in the interviews saw the product and what
were the initial reactions towards the product on the Internet.
6.3 Non-users’ problems towards the product
In order to understand the non-users and their problems with the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet, two different methods were used. First, five non-users were interviewed, of
whom four were chosen because they were heavy users of the Internet; they all kept a
public weblog and used several social Internet services. The last interviewee was
chosen to represent a non-user who belonged to the social group of hackers. The
53
interviewees were all male aged between 20 and 29. Two of them were from North
America and three were from Finland.
The second method of how non-users view of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet were
collected was by observing popular discussion groups, weblogs and technology news
site on the Internet. Both of these methods, interviews and Internet observations,
were then used to make a list of the problems that non-users had with the product.
All of the interviewees emphasized how they saw the potential of the device as a
“media player” or a “media device” due to its portability and quality widescreen. The
possibility of using the Internet was seen as somewhat of a “bonus” or a “nice
feature” but many of the problems seen in the device were derived from its inability
to store large amounts of media like music, pictures and video. This proved that the
idea of an “Internet Tablet” was somewhat hard to comprehend for the interviewees.
The lack of keyboard was another problem that almost all the interviewees
mentioned along with the media problem.
I don’t use 770.. It’s not pocketable and it is aimed for multimedia usage.
I have no use for a gadget without a keyboard.
[Interviewee 11]
Net connectivity is a good bonus, but touch screen as an input device is
not compelling. Text input is an important feature to me.
[Interviewee 12]
My dream machine would be something like this, wide & touch screen,
80 gigabytes of memory and a small keyboard.
[Interviewee 13]
There's a couple of key reasons I haven't pulled the trigger on a 770 yet -
1) no storage, 2) I've read that the applications run slow, 3) some have
actually complained about a lack of keyboard but I could maybe live
without that , 4) battery life.
[Interviewee 14]
54
I don't like the 1GB limit on the MMC memory card.. For something that can
play music and videos, one gigabyte is a very small limit to content. I would
tire of swapping memory cards to access all of my music or videos.
[Interviewee 15]
In order to reflect the views of the interviewees, comments about the Nokia 770
Internet Tablet from various discussion groups and weblogs on the internet were also
observed. The following comments are examples from various technology related
Internet sites that published stories about the 770 Internet Tablet following the
public introduction of the product.
..Instant failure. No HDD.
- If they could increase the battery life, this would be awesome as a networked portable media player
- But the choice of the OMAP processor is bad. It can only go up to 220 MHz as the previous post
mentioned. Not good for multi-tasking and other functions. (Engadget.com 2005)
- (1) No built-in hard drive. With most newer devices vying for attention by putting in at least 1Gb of
storage, its a real mystery why this doesn’t come with at least 4Gb. (2) Too little RAM. Why limit it to
only 64Mb? With memory so cheap nowadays, this should have 512Mb or more. (3) No keyboard. This
is the big clincher. For some reason someone out there in Corporate world believes nobody wants a
keyboard. Not so. We want BOTH a touch screen and a keyboard. (PCMAG.com 2005)
- I think it's a pity that the rather beautiful design and obviously neat software doesn't include Nokia's
core function: mobile phone connectivity (and not through BT). (Slashdot.com 2005)
- But for most mainstream users, the 770 is a disappointment. With more horsepower and a revamped
interface, it might get closer to the holy grail. (Personal Technology 2006)
In addition to the issues with the product’s memory and text input methods, the
missing mobile phone feature and the products processing power were seen as
problems. The problems of the non-users group in relation to the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet are presented in the figure 11.
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Figure 11: Problems of the non-users related to Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
Even though non-users had many problems with the device, it was obvious from
the very beginning that hackers were interested in the product since it was easy to
customize and “hack”. In the next chapter, hackers’ innovation activity around
the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is reviewed further.
6.4 Hacking the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
Due to the Linux operating system, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is very “hackable”
since it is relatively easy to develop new applications for the device. This section will
introduce the most popular user-made applications, or hacks, for the 770 Internet
Tablet and go through the interviews with their authors. As the applications are
licensed under an open source license, they are also distributed freely to anyone.
The aim of this section is to demonstrate how hackers expanded the functionality of
the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet by developing their own solutions to their needs
regarding the device. This way the problems and solutions of the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet can be connected to the social group of hackers.
Maemo Mapper
Maemo Mapper, is an open source application developed by John “Gnuite” Costigan,
that can be used together with a GPS-receiver to show the whereabouts of its user.
Non-usersMemory problem
Text Input problem
Processing power problem
Non-phone problem
Storage problem
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The program downloads maps from on-line map repositories and uses them to
display the location of its user on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet’s screen. When the
first version of application was introduced on internettablettalk.com, it soon became
the most discussed application for the device.
I've been working with computers (in an educational or occupational
capacity) ever since I was about 9 years old. I've always loved to concept of
controlling computers with programming, so when it came time for college,
the choice seemed pretty obvious, especially with the tech boom going on at
the time. (…) My hobbies have always included computer-based things like
programming and learning new languages and such
[Interviewee 9, John “Qnuite” Costigan]
JM: How did your development work on the Nokia 770 start?
While participating in the forums at Internet Table Talk, I started becoming
interested in the idea of using the Nokia 770 as an inexpensive navigation
system. The large screen seemed ideal for it. Upon introduction to the
community, it got a very positive reception. People claimed it as the best-
looking application available on the Nokia 770
[Interviewee 9, John “Qnuite” Costigan]
In order to function properly, Maemo Mapper needs graphical map data that is not
included with the application. Instead, the application can be assigned to download
maps from on-line map repositories like Google Maps. The problem is that the user
Figure 12: Screen capture of Maemo Mapper application for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet developed by John "Gnuite" Costigan
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license of Google’s Map service, along with other similar services, forbids users to
download the map data to be used in applications like the Maemo Mapper. To avoid
legal consequences, John Costigan states in the user agreement of the Maemo
Mapper that he cannot held responsible for users actions with the application.
Also, to (hopefully) cover my own butt legally, use of this software requires
and implies that you agree that you understand that using Maemo Mapper to
download maps from a commercial map repository may be considered a
violation of copyright law and that John Costigan cannot be held responsible
for any of your actions related thereto. (Maemo mapper website, 2006)
As the application is legally somewhat in a “gray area” whether it is legal or not, for
Nokia it would be problematic to officially endorse the Maemo Mapper application
even tough it has gotten very popular among the hacker community.
Media Converter and Theme Maker
Along with Maemo Mapper, Media Converter and Theme Maker are two popular
programs that also expand the functionalities of the 770 Internet Tablet beyond
browsing the Internet.
I wanted to make it easier for the people to make better use of their 770
internet tablet. I have made Media converter program that makes it
easy for users to convert videos from their own machine to the format
that the 770 supports and also I have made the Theme Maker program
that makes it possible to create different themes for the device. (...) I
dare to say that almost everyone in the non-developer scene [of 770] has
my media converter program. (…) It has been downloaded over 11,000
times.
[Interviewee 8, Urho Konttori]
Media Converter is a program that converts video files to a format that is supported
by the Nokia 770 internet tablet. At the same time, the size of the video file is reduced
as the video is cropped to optimal resolution for the device. In this way, the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet can easily be used for something that it was not originally meant
to be used for, as a portable media device. Media converter has been one of the most
58
downloaded applications of the device, with over 11.000 downloads according to its
author, Urho Konttori.
Figure 13: Screen captures of Media Converter and Theme Maker applications developed by Urho Konttori
So the need for the Media converter was born since the video playing
software [of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet] was very limited and there
was no video convertors that could do the thing that I was looking for.
Media Converter was a program that I developed because as soon as I
got the device I wanted test videos on it. I was trying some examples and
I found that they were working beautifully, Then I trying to assist
people on the Internettablettalk.com forums to do the same that I was
doing. No luck, they couldn’t do it. Then I made a bat script that could be
used by dropping a video file to it. Again, people couldn’t use it. I decided,
that I will make an app that even the average Windows user could use.
[Interviewee 8, Urho Konttori]
The motivation for Urho Konttori to create media converter software was the need to
use the 770 Internet Tablet as a media player and to help others to do the same. His
development work was driven forward by the inability of normal users to use the
tools that he developed.
GAIM instant messenger
The GAIM instant messaging application is an interesting example of the relation
between “hacking” and the interests of commercial actors. GAIM is a multiclient
messenger application for Linux that can be used to connect to various instant
messaging clients. Nokia employee, Devesh Kothari, ported GAIM to work with the
Nokia 770 as a hobby project in 2005. What makes this interesting is that users could
59
then use this program to connect to instant messaging services that Nokia did not
officially support nor paid licensing fees for.
Finished port of Gaim 1.5 internet messenger for Maemo/Nokia 770.
This had been my hobby project and took me not long to get all the
dialogs etc work nicely for n770 screen size. DISCLAIMER :) This is my
hobby project and Nokia has nothing to do with it.
[Devesh Kothari Blog 2005]
The question of whether or not GAIM is illegal is not straightforward. Instant
messaging services are typically closed. The protocols used by MSN Instant
Messenger or AIM Instant Messenger are not public protocols. Tools like GAIM have
to reverse engineer the protocols to work. When there is no source code available for
the software, the efforts towards discovering the source code for the software is called
reverse engineering (Reverse engineering, 2006). Technically, using a non-supported
client such as GAIM is probably illegal (Notenboom 2006). The author of GAIM for
Linux, Mark Doliner, stated that connecting to other instant messaging servers might
be trespassing since the servers belong to other people, but on the other hand they
have put their servers on the internet making it possible for anyone to connect (Are
there legal issues? 2004). When asked about the legality of GAIM when it connects to
Microsoft’s messenger service, Microsoft’s product manager states:
At this time, there is not a program or set of API's for licensed
connectivity to the Messenger service. There have been one-off licensed
examples, the Reuters IM client, the Microsoft Office LCS Communicator
Figure 14: Screenshot of GAIM instant messenger port for Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
60
client, the Yahoo interoperability that was announced in October, and a
handful of mobile clients. However, the desktop clients that you
mention, GAIM and Trillian, are currently operating in an unlicensed
manner. (Legal issues 2006)
In 2005 when GAIM was ported to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the device did not
officially support instant messaging. Nokia however stated at the launch of the
product that a software update would be provided to make instant messaging and
internet calls possible. After a year, when the next installment of the 770 operating
system called OS 2006 came out, Google chat and Google talk instant messaging and
voice over internet protocol (VOIP) clients were added to the device. However, the
word around the hacking weblogs and discussion groups was that the device was
capable of these features straight from the start.
The best news for you is that Nokia has set up a comprehensive development
site. (...) It even has a walkthrough for how to port applications to the device.
As an example they show how to port GAIM which is funny because most
places have reported that IM [ instant messaging] support won’t be released
until 2006. (Hack a Day 2005)
The GAIM example demonstrates how it is faster to develop and implement a new
feature, instant messaging, to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet by hobbyist “hacking”
than what could be officially done by Nokia. Nokia officially could not develop and
include this functionality to the device itself as it would have to pay licensing costs to
Microsoft or to other companies.
ScummVM and Bluetooth plug-in
ScummVM is a multi-platform virtual machine which was originally made to allow
one to play Lucas Arts adventure games that use the SCUMM-programming system
on platforms other than those for which they were originally released. Due to
copyright restrictions, ScummVM does not include the game data, so users have to
own copies of the games. Tomas Junnonen, a Nokia employee, ported ScummVM
for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and distributed it along with the Bluetooth plug-in
in his personal homepage titled “Hacking the Nokia 770”.
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I’m a great fan of the old LucasArts games such as Monkey Island,
Maniac Mansion etc. The idea of the SCUMMVM for the 770 was almost
self-evident, if there’s a way to run code on some device someone will
eventually port SCUMMVM for the device.
[Interviewee 10. Tomas Junnonen]
The Bluetooth plug-in was another program developed by Tomas Junnonen.
With the Bluetooth plug-in it was possible to connect the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet to external keyboard to make the text input easier.
The development of the Bluetooth plugin started inside Nokia as a [internal
name of the development project], these are typically “it would be cool if”
kind of projects. The purpose of this was for me to learn a new development
environment and maybe at the same time make something useful. (…) It
wasn’t obvious at all that the plugin would be distributed outside Nokia at
all. (…) The idea for keyboard support came from the team but to release it
outside Nokia was my idea (…) At the moment the keyboard support is not a
product-level feature that Nokia would want to support, but if / when a
keyboard support for the product is added, the groundwork has been
already partly done.
[Interviewee 10, Tomas Junnonen]
Scummvm, Bluetooth keyboard plug-in along with GAIM were applications
developed by Nokia employees as a hobby projects that were then released and
distributed in their developers personal websites. Nokia as a company had
Figure 15: Screenshot of ScummVM port for the Nokia 770 Internet tablet playing “The Secret of the Monkey Island 2”
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HackersCustomization problem
Communication problem
Media Convertor
GAIM Messenger
Maemo Mapper
Theme Maker
Media problem
Gaming problem
GPS Navigation problem
Connectivity problem
Figure 16: Nokia 770 Internet Tablet connected to hackers and their problems and solutions
SCUMM VM
nothing to do with these applications while the hackers enhanced the usage
scenarios of the Nokia 770 Internet tablet with their applications. Similarly,
Media converter, Theme Maker and Maemo Mapper were applications
developed by users of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet who were all motivated to
reinvent the product to do something more than what it originally could do.
According to the hackers, Nokia 770 Internet Tablet offered them possibilities
that other products did not. Many interviewees said that they were quite
satisfied with the product even while many of them mentioned same problems
in the product than the non-users did. This is why the “problems” that connect
the social group of hackers to the solutions could also be referred as
opportunities to innovate. In the figure 16 the innovation activity around the
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is demonstrated as I have connected the social group
of hackers to problems and solutions around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
I have incorporated all of the interactions around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
followed in this thesis to the figure 17. There are three social groups present -
manufacturer Nokia, the non-users and the hackers. Nokia is connected to the three
product concepts that were not brought to the markets and to the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet that was launched in 2005. Trough the problems and solutions that Nokia had,
the outcome was the Nokia 2006 software update for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
adding new functionalities for the product.
Bluetooth plugin
63
GAIM Messenge
r
Media problem Media Converter
Non-phone problem
Memory problem
Processing power problem
Text Input problem
Bluetooth plug-in
Solutions
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
OS 2006 software update
Problems
Artifact
Social group
Figure 17: Problems and solutions of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet connected to relevant social groups and other artifacts
Communicationproblem
Google Talk IMGoogle Talk VOIP
Finger keyboard
Instant Messaging
problem
Font problem
Theme Maker
Navigation problem
Nokia
“Darude”
“Multipart”
Non-users“Laika”
Symbian platform problem
Linux operating system
Text Input problem
SCUMM VM
Maemo Mapper
Screen technology
problem
WLANPenetration
problem
Gaming problem
Text Input problem
Hackers
64
The focus with the non-users was in the problems of the product. This helped to
understand the reasons why this social group did not want to adopt the product.
Through the interviews and on-line observations with the non-users, it became clear
that the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet lacked the features of products that it was
compared against. It could not store large amount of media like digital media players,
it could not be used as a mobile phone and the ability to browse the Internet was not
as significant functionality that it would had overcome these problems.
The social group of hackers was similar to the non-users in sense of their problems
related to the product, but the opportunities for hobbyist hacking that the product
was embedded with enabled them to start innovative interactions around the product.
In the next chapter, the meaning and the implications of these interactions is studied
further.
6.5 Developing the concept of hacker-hobbyism
In this chapter, I will develop the concept of “hacker-hobbyism” to describe hackers’
innovative interactions around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This is done in the
context of the social construction and incorporates the components of the SCOT-
model –relevant social groups, interpretative flexibility, technological frame and
closure & stabilization – while at the same time building on the concept from Kotro’s
(2005) studies about hobbyism and hobbyist product development.
By “rolling the snowball” and then “following the actors” it was first identified that
the current users of the 770 internet tablet were seen as “hackers”, “geeks” and
“developers”. With this identification, the first element of the SCOT model, the
relevant social group of users, was brought in. In the interviews that were conducted
with these innovating users, they all mentioned computers, technology and
customization as their hobbies when general questions about their lifestyle was asked.
Further, when “following the actors” into their personal websites and discussion
groups on the Internet, they were referring to their development work as “hacking”.
Remembering the fact that the Nokia 770 uses Linux as its operating system and that
hacker culture and the open source movement are closely tied together (Hippel 2003,
65
Himanen 2000, Raymond 2001, Lakhani 2003) this is not a surprise. Due to these
reasons, the relevant social group of users was named simply as “hackers”.
The interpretative flexibility towards the product was demonstrated as the people
inside Nokia, hackers and the non-users were making sense of the Nokia 770 in the
interviews. In addition, also discussion groups and blogs around the Internet were
investigated to reflect the views of the interviewees. While Nokia’s goal was to
established a new kind of consumer device category with the “Internet Tablet”
concept, the initial reactions toward the product with non-users was that the product
was a “media player” or “media device”. Moreover, it was seen as a “non-working”
device since it lacked many of the features that non-users saw as important, for
example adequate amount of memory to store media content. The hackers instead
were satisfied with the product. For them, the product was “working” as it allowed
them to “hack” the product due to its open source operating system, while the
problems and limitations of the device didn’t seem to matter. For this user group, the
ability to customize and solve problems by hacking the product resulted in its
problems being overlooked.
The third combined element of closure and stabilization of technology, in the
analysis of technology, means that the interpretative flexibility of an artifact
diminishes and consensus among the different relevant social groups with regards to
the dominant meaning of an artifact emerges (Bijker 1995, 86). In the scope of this
study, I cannot make any arguments about the closure or stabilization of the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet. I find two possible reasons for this. First, it must be remembered
that it took decades for the design of the “safety bicycle” to reach closure and stabilize
in Bijker’s (1995) study. The Nokia 770 internet tablet was brought to the markets in
2005, so by following its development for one product generation, which is
equivalent to the time spent making this thesis, might be too short of time for
interpretative flexibility to diminish or to observe it. Secondly, the inability to
recognize “closure” within this study is somewhat in line with the critics of the SCOT-
model. Williams & Edge (1996) state that the SCOT approach tends to have difficulty
in accounting for closure since the possibilities of interpretative flexibility seem
endless.
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The fourth and the final element of the SCOT-model, the technological frame, can
help to understand why and how the innovations of hackers shape the product in a
different direction than Nokia’s product development. Bijker (1995, 123) states that
technological frame structures the interactions among the actors of a relevant social
group. In this thesis I argue that there are differences in how hackers and Nokia’s
product development team interacts with the artifact, thus creating a different
technological frames in which interaction happens. For hackers it was possible to
implement new features for the product with the applications they developed. For a
manufacturer like Nokia, it takes a longer time to implement and test new
functionalities that can then be incorporated to the product. In the interviews and in
informal discussions that I was involved with it was stated many times that
applications like GAIM messenger and Maemo Mapper had functionalities that
Nokia could not utilize or endorse due to its possible licensing costs and conflicts in
intellectual property rights not owned by Nokia.
Now, after going through the elements of SCOT, I want to extend Kotro’s (2005)
concepts of “hobbyism” and “hobbyist knowledge” towards the concept of “hacker-
hobbyism”.
Kotro (2005) argued that product developers and other people involved in the
product development process working at the sports manufacturer Suunto, brought
the values and ideals of the sport communities that they were involved with as a
resource for the innovative product development process. As one interviewee said in
Kotro’s (2005, 13) study: “What is close to your heart follows you to work”. Hobbyist
knowing is based on taking part in the use context of a product and making sense
through practices embedded and embodied in them and by “bringing personal to the
product development” (Kotro 2005, 173).
Hacker-hobbyism takes place when “hobbyist knowledge” allows translating and
bringing both individual insights, values and ideals of communities into one’s own
work and product development (Kotro 2005, 13). However, hacker-hobbyism differs
from “hobbyism” as the hackers bring their ideals and innovations to the product
after it is brought to the marketplace. This innovation in the diffusion phase of the
product could also be referred to as innofusion (Fleck 1988), re-inventing (Rogers &
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Rice 1980) or in a more cultural sense appropriation (du Gay 1995) but adding to
those concepts, I want to emphasize the nature and consequences of hacker-
hobbyism to prospective and current business models of commercial actors like
Nokia.
For example, if Nokia would consider to build a business model out of selling
location based services like map software for the 770 Internet Tablet, the company
would have to consider that a free application, Maemo Mapper, has already been
created and is constantly being developed further by the hacker community. As this
example shows, hacker-hobbyism possesses a challenge for developing prospective
business models at Nokia, but at its best, it can be used to provide new insights and
new ideas in this task.
On the other hand, the situation where hackers innovate against current business
models of commercial actors is what could be described as “user driven creative
destruction” in contrast to the Schumpeter’s (1975) industrial creative destruction
that was driven by capitalistic entrepreneurs. In addition, the terms parasitic
innovation (Mollick 2004) or disruptive innovation (Christensen 1997) could be used
in to the situation where the innovation activity conflicts with business models of
commercial actors, forcing them to seek new ways to maintain their market position.
One interviewee gave an insightful example of this with Sony and their Playstation
portable (PSP) gaming device. As Sony’s business model is based on game sales,
hackers are constantly trying to make the device able to run “homebrew” code and
game emulators and by doing so they fight against Sony’s business model.
Sony updates their firmware often, and every time, they patch the
holes people have found to enable homebrew. Every step of the way is
a fight against Sony to continue homebrewing on their console.
[Interviewee 6, Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor]
Hacker-hobbyism can, in its most destructive form, lead to an open conflict against
the business models of commercial actors in order to enable the diffusion of the
“homebrew” innovations made by hackers. By utilizing the open source development
model, like with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, hackers can easily put their code on
the device and develop new applications for it.
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The fact that it [770] is open source means that there would be easier
ways to put my code on. That is a major selling point of the unit for
people like me since they [Nokia] are not fighting against
homebrewers/personal developers.
[Interviewee 6, Urho Konttori]
By nature, hacker-hobbyism is a user innovation activity that is not restricted by
legal and proprietary issues that normally sets guidelines for corporation based
research and development processes. Hackers instead, develop new functionalities
and applications that they see useful for themselves and others in the community.
This difference makes the process of innovation more straightforward and faster to
deploy than inside manufacturer’s organizations. Nokia’s senior R&D manager
follows this view.
The hackers can make things happen faster than we can, no doubt
about it. They can develop solutions regardless of laws, regulations
and formal organizational chains much faster than Nokia”
[Interviewee 3, senior R&D manager, Nokia]
The hacker-hobbyism concept emphasizes the meaning of hacker culture that brings
in social and cultural factors to ones work as the process of innovation is referred to
as “hacking” and where the innovation work is not limited to necessarily working
merely as “co-developers” (Jeppesen 2003, 2005) towards shared and out-spoken
goals of the products manufacturer.
7 CONCLUSIONS
The goal of this thesis was to examine the role of hackers and user made innovations
in the development of a new consumer product. I approached this problem through a
rich case study of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet by Nokia and chose the social
construction of technology as my theoretical framework, which guided the empirical
part of my research.
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In this thesis, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was deconstructed into a three different
devices following the three different social groups making sense of the product. For
the people inside Nokia the product was an “Internet Tablet” made for the mass
markets while the relevant group of users, hackers, saw the device as a “hackable
device” and non-users saw the product as a “media device” based on interviews and
observations from the Internet. In the SCOT-methodology this difference as to how
relevant social groups see the product is called interpretative flexibility. Hackers saw
the artefact as “working” because in spite of its problems, it was “hackable” due to its
open source Linux operating system. The non-users saw the product as “non-
working” because they compared it to other products like digital media players or
mobile phones while intended main use of internet browsing was seen as a nice
bonus feature.
Through another element of the SCOT-model, the technological frame, I have
attempted to define a dimension in the field of user innovation that has not received
much attention in the academic literature. As a result of this study I propose a term
“hacker-hobbyism” to define how innovations and insights from a group of users,
hackers, affected the functionalities and use possibilities for the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet after it was brought to the markets. Hacker-hobbyism is a user innovation
activity that follows hacker culture and which is not restricted by legal or proprietary
issues that sets guidelines for manufacturers’ development activities. The
consequence of hacker-hobbyism is that hackers can develop and implement
functionalities to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet that would be impossible to do for
Nokia’s official product development. As demonstrated with ScummVM, GAIM
messenger and the Bluetooth keyboard plugin, sometimes even Nokia’s own
employees drive hacker-hobbyism by developing new functionalities to the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet as personal hobby projects. This can then be used to get early
feedback from the hacker community and test whether the new functionality poses
potential for future development.
The results of hacker-hobbyism, the popular applications among hackers like the
GAIM messenger port and Maemo Mapper are questionable in terms of intellectual
property rights, which make it difficult or even impossible for Nokia to officially
endorse them. Nokia could not have developed an instant messaging program that
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connects the 770 Internet Tablet’s users to proprietary instant messaging protocols
without negotiating first with the owner of those protocols. Similarly, Maemo
Mapper that has become one of the most used homebrew application for the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet, uses Google’s map repositories in a way that would be
impossible for Nokia to use since the maps can only be used for non-commercial
purposes according to its user license. Hackers innovation activity around the artifact
is free of the many legal and organizational issues that company based R&D is
attached, demonstrating the difference in the technological frame of these two social
groups. This makes the process of innovation easier and faster for hackers to achieve
with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet than what it is to Nokia’s product development.
The outcomes of hacker-hobbyism make the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet more
versatile as a product than it was originally developed to be. The open source Linux
operating system of the device makes it easy for skilled users to develop new
applications for the device. Nokia 770 Internet Tablet can now be used as a gaming
machine, GPS-navigator, digital media player among many other possible use-cases.
The innovation activity and potential around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has
transformed it into a highly desirable product among the social group of hackers. It
remains as an inspiring challenge for Nokia to use this unexpected market position to
their advantage while seeking mass-market acceptance for the next generation open
source products.
By combining cultural and social aspects of technology- and innovation studies into
the product development story of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in this thesis, a rich
case study has been presented on sociotechnical change.
7.1 Limitations and further research suggestions
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was launched in November 2005 being the first
product of the Internet Tablet product line in Nokia. The whole product line is still
in a very early stage of its diffusion and shaping process. Successful new artifacts
can take many product generations to develop as it took decades for personal
computers to domesticate into everyday use at homes. Being an interesting
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research subject because of its newness, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet also has
some set limitations for this study.
First, the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is very ”young” as is
the artifact itself. In Bijker’s (1995) study, the development of bicycle was followed
for hundreds of years and over multiple product generations and variations. This
brings in an interesting question; was it too early to develop a social construction of
an artifact that has just been brought to the markets? One could compare this study
to a study of the first machine that distantly resembles the modern bicycle
somewhere in 1785 followed for a 10 month period of time.
Secondly, this thesis only followed one artifact and furthermore one successful
artifact. Bijker (1995) specifically called for analysis of unsuccessful artifacts to reach
a ”symmetrical analysis”. This limitation is also part of the first limitation; as the
diffusion to markets has just begun, it is too early to call for unsuccessful artifacts
generated after the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
Third, some notions about the reliability and validity of this study should be made.
The social construction of the Nokia 770 internet tablet as presented in this study is
not by any means a complete, all-inclusive model. Rather, the constructive approach
to the study subject makes this study a subjective and explorative study into user
innovation activity around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. More studies about
hackers involvement in the development of other new high-technology consumer
products should be conducted before the results of this study can be generalized.
For further studies the following research questions might be interesting.
- What kind of conflicts, if any, rise between hackers innovations and Nokia’s
business models in the future?
- What has been the role of hacker-hobbyism in the next product generations
of Nokia’s open source based consumer products?
- What kind of form does hacker-hobbyism take in the development of other
high-technology consumer products?
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- Can hacker-hobbyism produce weak signals on how technology evolves in the
future?
Further, also the meaning and the input of the open source software communities in
the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet could be an interesting research
subject and would help to understand hackers and their innovativeness better. In
this thesis, the approach was more in the innovations of individual hackers. This was
for the reason that the open source software communities tend to focus on making
software platforms like Linux slowly more stable and better while the outcomes of
individual hackers were more “visible” as in stand-alone programs like the popular
applications reviewed in this thesis.
To sum up, the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet presented in this
study is not a complete, all-inclusive model but it can still provide insights and ideas
for new cross-disciplinary studies about user innovations, hackers and the social
change of technology.
7.2 Managerial implications
In this section, I will draw together my experiences working inside Nokia and suggest
managerial implications based on my study.
Nokia’s goal is to create a new market for internet tablet devices like the Nokia 770
and capitalize on this market. In order to create a new market, I would argue that
also an imaginary user has to be created that represents the new markets. This is
something that cannot be done by what Akrich (1995) calls explicit methods, by
market surveys or based on user feedback because the imagined user has to
represent new markets, not existing ones. Instead, I want to do is emphasize the role
of implicit methods of creating a imaginary user representation. This process should
involve people from marketing, R&D and product development. The inability to
come up with an appealing implicit user representation was something that I viewed
currently as a challenge for the Internet Tablet project inside Nokia.
73
I want also to challenge the view that a company developing high-technology open
sourced consumer products, Nokia in this case, can or should ultimately decide and
speak out what an artifact is and what should it be used for. The manufacturers
“script” of use scenarios should be tolerant and open. In the interviews and in the
informal discussions managers at Nokia were often saying, “it’s not a media device”,
“it’s an internet tablet”. When looking at the most used applications for the Nokia
770 Internet Tablet, it was somewhat easy to see what the product was used for
among the hackers. The most discussed and downloaded application for the device
was the media converter program that decoded video files to be played with the
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. One hacker said in an interview “the large screen just
screams, play a dvd on me”. Further, many of the non-user interviewees said that the
internet is just a nice bonus on the device. It should be considered that maybe
manufacturers are unable to tell to its most innovative customers anymore what a
product is and what it should be used for.
To this day we have taken zero intentional input from our user community
to our product development…we should listen them more than we do now.
[Senior R&D manager, Nokia]
What Nokia could do instead is to first turn to the most innovating hackers and see
what kind of uses they have discovered for the product and then formulate the
“scripts” of possible use cases that are communicated to markets. This might be a
successful strategy in order to seek mass market acceptance for the product as
hackers most likely represent the “lead users” (Hippel 2005) of technology that are
ahead of important market trends and are positioned to benefit significantly by
creating innovative solutions to their problems.
There are also examples of hacker-hobbyism and its consequences on products other
than the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. One of the hackers interviewed for this thesis
said that he has recognized how Microsoft uses hackers’ innovations as a source for
their gaming console product development.
74
I know for a fact that smarter developers like Microsoft are watching the
homebrew hacking scene closely. Lost of the features of this new Xbox 360
console are the same as hackers did for the original Xbox.
[Interviewee 15, Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor]
Kaheny (2005, 73) writes in his book about the cult of Apple’s iPod that hackers
might have been source of inspiration for Apple’s product development when
functionalities beyond music playback where added to the Apple iPod.
It is possible that Apple had planned from the start to make the iPod into an
erzats PDA, but it’s also possible that the company took its lead from the
iPod hackers, who, almost from the minute the gadget hit the store shelves,
were busy figuring out clever ways of making the iPod do more than just
play the music. (Kahney 2005, 73)
Hacker-hobbyism and the hacking phenomenon should be explored further when
creating a compelling marketing strategy and message for the future open source
products of Nokia. The user-producer interaction is a unique selling point that could
be used to generate new kind of consumer culture around high-technology products.
Until now, the unique user-producer interaction around the Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet has not been used to communicate products advantages to the potential
customers other than other than hobbyists and hackers. At this time, there are no
similar portable computers that involve user innovators as much as the Nokia 770
Internet Tablet, so it should be marketed as the most desired flagship product of the
hackers and their innovative culture.
In conclusion, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is unlike any other product currently in
the markets. Hackers, their innovative culture and interaction around the product
should be used as a resource not only for product development but also for market
development. In this task, Nokia should consider developing a marketing strategy
utilizing the innovating culture of the hackers.
75
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Interviews
Ari Jaaksi, 23.2.2006. TampereValtteri Halla, 28.2.2006. HelsinkiHarri Lilja, 27.3.2006. OuluJanne Jalkanen, 15.6.2006 HelsinkiJari Valström, 18.7.2006. Helsinki – New YorkKaroliina Ervasti, 29.7.2006. HelsinkiJuha Lehtomäki, 3.8.2006. HelsinkiTomas Junnonen, 13.8.2006. HelsinkiShaun ”Dragonminded” Taylor, 5.6.2006. Helsinki – San FranciscoJohn Costigan, 20.8.2006. Helsinki – Washington D.C”Digital Gopher”, 14.07.2006. Helsinki – San FranciscoUrho Konttori, 27.7.2005. HelsinkiJyri Engeström, 19.06.2006 HelsinkiIsko Salminen, 22.6.2006. HelsinkiHerkko Hietanen, 03.07.2006. Helsinki